Final update on my Volkswagen CC: Now sold for a dramatic German

It is on this day I decided to first sell the car and figure out what to do next. I couldn't get myself to live with a car that always left me wondering if it would leave me stranded on the road.

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Final Update:

December 2022:

I replaced the NGK Spark Plugs with OEM Replacements and Ignition Coils from APR.

The old sparkplugs, not sure when they were last replaced before I swapped them out.

January 2023:

I wanted to upgrade the cornering lamps in the headlights to LEDs to improve the brightness, as the bixenons were too bright and were overshadowing the cornering lamps, to the extent that one explicitly needed to notice the cornering lamps to know they existed.

However, after installing the CANBUS-compatible LEDs, the car didn't approve of them and kept complaining.

On these VWs and many other cars with modern electronics, if there is a fault/error, it results in the related features not working, in this case, the AFS. I tried 2-3 different LEDs of different wattages from different manufacturers, although all of them were from Chinese brands, and all of them ended up with the same result, it would light up exactly once, and then throw the error. I finally gave up on trying to upgrade these and returned/sold all of the bulbs I bought for this upgrade.

The months leading up to May 2023 were pretty uneventful, with me not doing much with the car apart from just using it to go to classes. I needed to go to Austin, TX for 3 months for my summer internship. The shortest distance one way was about 1000 miles (~1600 km). However, I wanted to take detours in New Mexico on the way to visit a few tourist attractions, The White Sands National Park, and Roswell, a city famous for its UFO history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_incident). Here are a few pictures from this drive:

I love how the wheels fill the rear wheel-well arch perfectly.

Since I didn't have many friends in Austin, weekends were pretty boring, So I started visiting dealerships to check out cars for time-pass, this would also help me decide what car I would want to buy next. I started with VW again, to see the Arteon. The Sportback design appealed to me more than any other car since the first time I saw the car in the pictures online.

They also had a pre-owned 2019 Audi A5. I drove the 2023 Arteon and the 2019 A5 back to back, and honestly, I was shocked to find the Arteon to be more comfortable in terms of the ride quality and handling, and much quicker. I love how the A5/S5/RS5 Sportback looks though, probably my favorite car in terms of pure design and looks.

Arteon still felt very much like a VW and didn't feel as special as a $50,000 car to me, mainly because I was already used to the brand, and having owned and driven for so long. On the other hand, BMW M340i's popularity was skyrocketing. Everyone was singing praises of the car and the 6-cylinder B58. So, a couple of weekends later, I walked into a BMW dealership to try out the M340i.

This was a CPO, with under 20k miles. I don't remember the spec of this car, except that it was an RWD, not an AWD with xDrive. The car felt fast, thanks to the B58. But the boot was so small that it was going to be a problem for trips with friends. This dealership also had a CPO G30 LCI M550i with the monstrous 4.4 twin turbo V8. I first read about the M550i in early 2022, and it has always been on my mind since then. A 523hp V8 car which is intended to be the perfect balance between a family sedan and a sports car depending on the driver's mood. The price difference between the 2021 M550i CPO and the 2022 M340i CPO was about $10,000. There's definitely a lot of value in this gap IMO. To me, the biggest value was the upgrade from a 3.0 Straight Six Single Turbo to the 4.4 V8 Twin Turbo. This $10,000 also brought forth a bigger car with better interior quality (albeit the design has largely stayed similar from F10 days), a more comfortable ride, and a bigger boot among many other things. A few pictures next to my CC.

The TD left me grinning from ear to ear. The V8 sound, the exhaust note, the mammoth 750nm torque, everything about the car was awesome.

One day, as I pulled into my office parking when the headlights came on automatically in a dark portion of the garage, an error popped up saying one of my headlight bulbs was malfunctioning.

I first ordered a pair of Open Box Philips D3S bulbs from eBay, and they arrived but to my horror, the ceramic tube was broken on both the bulbs. I ordered an additional pair from a different seller, this time verifying that there were no defects or issues with the bulbs, and proceeded to install the first pair I received for the time being until the new pair was delivered. The swap was a little difficult as there was very little space for my hand to go inside the headlight assembly and unclip the bulb. Noticed an immediate difference in brightness, it was then I realized how dull the factory bulbs had become with age.

When the new pair were delivered, they did not come in Philips packaging, although they did have Philips stickers on the bulbs. They weren't as bright as the pair I was returning. I decided to keep them since they weren't that expensive, getting the job done, brighter than my original bulbs.

After the end of my internship, I had to drive back to Arizona, this time, since I had already covered all the good places on the way, I took a direct route. It was mostly a straight road, with literally nothing. Felt literally like the middle of nowhere. A couple of pictures from a pitstop to refuel.

October 2023:

As I was all set to graduate in under 2 months, my friends and I were just hanging out one evening after watching one of the cricket world cup matches, We went to have ice cream in the night around 11 PM. While we were ordering, we were all talking about how we'd all be going our own ways in a few months/days time and decided to add a memory by making an impromptu plan to see the sunrise in San Diego, California. We went home, packed a pair of clothes, and were on our way to San Diego in 20 minutes. 

To make this memorable, we drove to La Jolla in San Diego and parked right in front of the ocean to take a nap.

Although we only slept for a couple of hours that night, the feeling in the morning was well worth it. I love beaches, and with the high of an impromptu plan with my friends by my side, the lack of sleep never really made a difference that day. I decided to call Bhpian and my friend fluidicjoy to meet since I was in San Diego. We met, and went to visit a tourist place before having lunch at the famous Charminar Indian Restaurant in San Diego. After lunch, we started our drive back to Arizona.

Thanks for this picture fluidicjoy

After this trip in October 2023, things were pretty uneventful again, between my India trip in February 2024 for my brother's wedding, and the job hunt in probably the worst market since the 2008 recession. Except for a minor accident in March 2024. I was waiting for a parking spot to free up as the car in the spot was backing up to leave, however, somebody behind me backed up into my car while I was waiting.

The driver in the other car was pretty shaken, and since it was only damage to the rear bumper, I didn't worry about it too much. I got his insurance information. We were both insured with the same company, Progressive. I called them up, described the incident, and gave the information. The claims officer called me and asked for a repeat telecast. When I gave her the information, she told me that the agent I first spoke to wrongly opened the claim on my insurance policy, and that since I was not at fault, this claim should be on the other person's policy. She closed the claim on my policy, opened a new claim on the other person's policy, and asked me to upload pictures of the damage on their website. Meanwhile, she was going to have to listen to the story from the other person's perspective to verify whose fault it was. The other person admitted fault, and they said they would send an estimate shortly. While I was waiting, I decided to take estimates from a few different collision centers. I was shocked to see estimates ranging around $1500. They said they would get a bumper from a car that was going to be scrapped, paint it again to match my car, and install it. $1500 for a scrap bumper, paint, and installation is a lot of money.

In the US, insurance companies give the option of either accepting their estimate and transferring that money to our account to do whatever we want, take it to a shop they have a tie-up with, take it to a shop we want to and send them the invoice. The insurance company's estimate was around $1400. Since I was still looking for a job at the time, I thought it would be best for me to just take the payout and get the car fixed later when I was in a better spot financially.

Fast forward to the last week of April 2024, I finally got an email from the company I interned with, asking if I could start working in exactly 17 days, with the workplace being in Denver, Colorado.

The drive to Denver was about 840 miles (~1350kms), nothing my car hadn't done or seen before in a single trip. However, I wanted to replace the tires with proper ones, as this drive involved driving at altitudes of 12000 feet with some places still having snow. I ordered a set of 4 Continental DWS06+ after comparing them with Michelin Pilot Sport 4s. The reviews and ratings seemed to judge the DWS06+ as the winner.

The front lower arm bushes that I had replaced when I bought the car started making noise again, I wanted to get this fixed before replacing the tires. 1 week before I was supposed to travel, On my way to the garage, about 0.5 mile from the garage, there was a traffic light that I was stopped at. Since it turned green, I accelerated to the first shock with this car. There was a heavy smell of gas, and the car had stalled, I didn't have enough space to pull over to the side of the road as there were a lot of fast-moving cars in the adjacent lanes, but the speed let me get to the next traffic light since it was a pretty small distance. The light turned green, and it was time to deal with angry travelers in the cars behind me, I attempted starting it again to move it to the side of the road to call RSA, it started and was limping, with RPM fluctuating, I could've probably made it to the garage, but I didn't want to risk catastrophic damage to the engine. Pulled into a safe lane, and plugged in my Obd11 to check what was happening before attempting to start again.

This did not look good, so I immediately called my insurer's RSA. They sent a tow truck within 1.5 hours. The first time any of my cars needed to be towed.

Dropped it off at the garage I was going to, I knew this was an injector issue at the very least, but could also require replacing fuel pumps.

The estimate I got was $1200 if it was going to be just the Injectors, or $3500 if fuel pumps would also need to be replaced, and there was no way of telling if the fuel pumps were going to need a replacement until we replace the injectors.

Having under a week to travel to Denver, I gave the go-ahead hoping that the trouble is gated to Injectors, and was pleased to find out that it was just that.

The garage also replaced the lower arm bushes for free, which they worked on back in 2022, after over 20 months.

I got the car back 1 day before travel and dropped the car for replacing the tires and an oil + filters service on the morning of my travel. The garage that replaced my tires ended up scratching my wheels while mounting/unmounting the tires and also put the mileage to be 3k miles higher than what the Odo was for god knows why, an honest mistake perhaps.

The car was super smooth with the Injectors having been fixed, much smoother than it was before the issue surfaced, the tires definitely helped to contribute to this feeling. After having spent $2500 on this car, I set out on my drive to Denver. After driving about 100 miles, I noticed the check engine light was coming on sometimes. I was driving in the mountains, entering Flagstaff, Arizona. By the time I could descend and stop to take a look, just as I was approaching a traffic light, the car started misfiring. This was probably the time I panicked the most, having traveled 100 miles already, with a car full of luggage, needing to reach Denver in 3 days to start working. I kept pumping the gas to make sure it didn't stall, pulled into a gas station, and stopped. Took a scan, and they pointed towards vacuum leaks and turbo. I definitely knew the turbo couldn't be bad all of a sudden, there were no signs of the issue. I was looking around in the engine bay and to my surprise, found the PCV Valve breather hose not connected. I wasn't sure if it came undone on this drive or if the garage didn't connect it before giving the car back to me. So I couldn't trust the clips on this hose and decided to use duct tape to make sure this issue didn't bother me again at least until I reached Denver.

My first stop was in Utah. The drive seemed pretty normal, no issues with the car after putting the hose back. The next day, I was going to be entering Colorado, and wanted to take a detour to explore a few spots on the way.

Once again, descending from the mountains into a city while I was stuck in a traffic jam, the car started throwing a flashing check engine light. I stopped as soon as I could, to check if the hose became undone but found it to be intact in its place. Continued onward with my journey. Just as I was pulling into the parking lot of my hotel in Vail, Colorado, the cluster started chiming loudly barking about Low Oil Pressure. Now this is not a fuel issue anymore, and was serious. The last two times this happened, I found a leak in the Oil pressure sensor which was breaking the circuit and causing this error to be thrown. I didn't have the right socket to check the sensor, and there were no auto parts shops at least in a 20-mile radius. 20 miles on a car with actual low oil pressure would cause catastrophic damage.

So I decided to park the car and take an Uber to the store to get the parts I needed to be able to diagnose, Vail is a small town famous for skiing, which meant almost everyone would come here in their own car to be able to get their equipment, meant no drivers for Uber or Lyft in the area.

Praying this was just a sensor issue, I set out on the final leg of the journey to Denver, a rather short 3-hour drive. It kept complaining about the low oil pressure every time I had to reduce speed, like in slow-moving traffic. This was annoying as every time it complained, It made a very loud chime, But the car did get me safely to Denver in the end. The previous two times, I had to replace the sensor with the one from the "Rein" brand, which seemed to have good reviews. because the lead time for the OEM part was too long (~1-2 weeks). This time, however, I decided to wait for the OEM sensor even if it took longer. The car was running fine at highway speeds (anything > 30 mph/ 50kmph) and was complaining when the speeds were low. I noticed that this time whenever the car was complaining, shortly after the engine started making metallic rattling sounds. This is definitely not good news.

One of the weekends, I drove up to the Rocky Mountain National Park, about 2 hours from where I live. While waiting in queue for parking on a 12000 feet mountain on an incline, the car started shaking again, with metallic rattling. I didn't have a cellular signal to take a scan with Obd11. So I had to take a quick stop and return immediately.

It is on this day I decided to first sell the car and figure out what to do next. I couldn't get myself to live with a car that always left me wondering if it would leave me stranded on the road. As soon as I got back from Rocky Mountain National Park, even before driving into my garage, I took pictures of the car and posted an ad on Facebook marketplace for a price $2500 cheaper than a comparable CC with similar mileage and age. I found a buyer and within 24 hours from when I posted the ad, the car was being driven away to its new home.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this car, I had a super long 3300-mile road trip to California, a 1000-mile one-way trip twice to and from Texas, Impromptu trips to California, and many more day trips within Arizona in the 21 months I had this car. Lots of memories of the car. One way to look at this car is that it became unreliable in the end, I did notice misfires in cold weather very early on in the ownership, but never really bothered about it because except for 1-2 very faint misfires once in a few months, there were no other signs of an issue. If this was because of Injectors all along, I drove with this issue for 21 months, on such long trips, at highway speeds (80 mph/ 130kmph) for extended periods. It could also be possible that the PCV breather hose not being connected for a 100-mile drive messed something up inside, I will never know.

I proceeded to take a rental from Avis at around $600 per month (A discounted rate, thanks to a perk from my employer) until I purchased a new car. They gave me a Hybrid Dodge Hornet, which I hated. My 2013 CC felt much faster, this car had infotainment issues, sometimes the screen would just go black, and no amount of restarting would help.

I found a car within a week that I could purchase. Teaser below. Hint: It's a dramatic car, the purchase process of which came with its own drama, thanks to the dealer.

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