Couple (relatively) minor issues to report:

First, about a month ago the front suspension started to develop a creaking noise whenever the car went over a bump.  Within a couple of weeks, though, the noise got so bad that you could hear the creak over the radio whenever you stopped, turned, hit a bump, anything that created motion in the suspension.  It was loud enough that people in other cars were looking at me with a, "Dude, your car is going to explode!" look.

Lucky for me, it turns out there's lots of other VW Jetta/Golf drivers with the same problem (I know, you're shocked, eh?) and thus, there are tons of post on the internet discussing the problem.  The vast majority of the posts traced the noise to the swaybar bushings, so last Friday I got the car up on jackstands and disassembled and greased the swaybar bushings.  Woohoo, squeak eliminated!

Whenever I fix something on the car, I always think to myself, "well, maybe that was the last of the problems and she'll be good for a while now."  Hahahahahahaha!

The following Tuesday night I jumped in the car to pick up my daughter from school, and I noticed the interior lights didn't come on.  "Hmm, someone must have turned off the interior lights," I thought to myself.  Then my wife opened up the passenger door and the lights came on.  I bet the driver side door switch went bad.

"No problem," I thought to myself, "I replaced one of those on the Sebring last year, couple dollars and couple minutes to fix."

Ha.  Hahahahahhahahahahaha!

I look around the door frame but don't see a door position switch anywhere.  So, I start searching on the internet where I find out hat:

1. This problem isn't extremely uncommon (are you sensing a pattern here?)
2. The door switch is integrated into the lock assembly
3. Said lock assembly costs $170+ from the dealer

Luckily, though, there were a couple of posts detailing how to rip the old switch out of the lock assembly and replace it with a $2.69 switch from Radio Shack, so I'll probably give that a shot.  Also, it's possible that it's just a bad solder joint, which would be an easy fix other than I have to disassemble the door to get to the lock assembly.  I know what I'm doing this coming weekend!

This car intrigues me.  On one hand, I know I should get rid of it as soon as possible and replace it with something (anything!) more reliable.

But I'm starting to develop this morbid sense of curiosity; I mean, how many things can go wrong?  What will break next?

The count so far:  11 non-scheduled maintenance items in 4 years and 3 months of ownership--basically, something breaks every 4.5 months.

Ben