Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

The mighty hatchback

Obvious to anyone with functioning eyes, the SUV body style is the vehicle of choice for most Americans. The commanding view outwards, the ease of ingress and egress, plus plenty of cargo space. I’d drive an SUV too if ferrying others and stuff is a common occurrence. I wouldn’t subject anyone to try to get into the passenger side of my Mazda MX-5. The UN Human Rights Council would classify that as torture.

Because I seldom carry people and things, I don’t own an SUV. Compared to vehicles types that are lower to the ground - sedans, coupes, convertibles, etc, high-riding SUVs do not handle as well nor are as fun to drive. They are as NPC of a car as it gets, which is just fine for non car enthusiasts. Again, I’d happily drive an SUV if a use case existed.

But sometimes I do need to play the UBER driver. That’s why I have the best compromise in vehicle-dom: the hatchback/wagon body style. It combines the fun driving dynamics of a sedan with the practicality of an SUV. My Volkswagen Golf GTI is the quintessential hot hatchback. With the backseats folded down, it can swallow a 65-inch television-sized box. IKEA runs, Costco runs, the GTI can do them all with ease. All the while offering enough performance and agility that many motoring journalists have declared that a hot Golf is all the car one will ever need, should one car is all you can afford.

The other day my friend arrived back from an overseas trip. I was on airport pickup duty. His family had seven pieces of luggage with them, all of which my GTI swallowed easily with the rear seats folded. Who needs an SUV? While I dream of an Audi RS6 wagon, my Golf GTI is indeed a lovely confluence of speed and practicality.

Think with your dipstick

It’s been a year since I’ve bought my 2019 Volkswagen Golf GTI from Carvana. (Here’s everything that was wrong with it.) That means the car is due for its annual oil change. In the last calendar year, the GTI got driven only about 3,300 miles. A surprisingly paltry amount, though granted I do not have a car commute. On mileage alone an oil service is premature, but for cars that don’t get driven much, fluids are changed according to a time schedule. As it is specified in the maintenance manual.

Great news for me, the Golf’s EA888 engine has a top side mounted oil filter, and an oil dipstick. This means I do not have to get under the car to perform the oil service. To get the oil out, I used a fluid extractor: the legendary Mityvac 7201. By shoving a tube down the dipstick channel into the sump, the oil gets pumped up and out with zero spills. The Mityvac can also reverse direction, so filling the used jugs with old oil cannot be any simpler.

Here’s a YouTube video showing the process.

I think every internal combustion car should be like this: top side oil filter and an oil dipstick. It makes changing the oil with an extractor a 10 minute procedure. The fact that not all engines are designed this way is a crime against humanity. (Plenty of new cars don’t even come with a dip stick.) I don’t care how secure the pair of jack stands are, and that a wheel has been shoved under a frame rail: getting underneath a car carries some risk. Especially for peasants like me lacking in garage or driveway. Public streets are often uneven and unmaintained.

But perhaps it’s all a moot point because of electric vehicles. Would our children even know about changing oil and getting gas when they grow to be adults? It’ll be a thing lost to the history books, like rewinding VHS tapes, and printing out MapQuest directions. Wrenching on cars will be reserved for old curmudgeons like me who can’t seem to let go of our gross polluters.

Hopefully the Mityvac that I bought will still be going strong. Because it was not cheap! Cheers to the spirits of buy once, cry once.

Meanwhile, the MX-5 has a dipstick, but *bottom* side oil filter. Going to have to get under it when the time comes.

Motor oil madness

I drove by a gas station last evening and saw that a gallon of premium 91 octane was over the $7 mark. A gallon of diesel was nearly $9! That is quite high, even for California. No wonder my coworker has stopped driving to work and instead is taking public transit. That extra half hour of commute time is worth the trade-off at the gas pump.

Meanwhile, my 10 minute walk of a commute remains unchanged.

Nevertheless, petroleum isn’t just purely at gas stations. It permeates and affects many things we buy and consume. The ongoing war with Iran is putting a self-inflicted squeeze on the petrol supply chain, and we haven’t yet seen the full brunt of it. Gas prices finally cresting $7 per gallon here in California might be the proverbial canary.

Word on the street is motor oil is suffering through a shortage, and consequently pricers are increasing. I’ve got two cars, both of which are gas burners. Every calendar year, they will need a flush and replenishment of oil. Much like the great toilet paper stock-up of early 2020 pandemic, the supposed smart wisdom amongst the car enthusiasts discussion is to stock up on engine oil before the prices inflate any higher.

Sadly for me, I don’t have the space to store copious amounts of oil containers. The inflation hammer will just have to hit me whenever it may fall. My Golf GTI is due for an oil change next month, so I bought six liters of the good German stuff at a little over $13 per liter. According to what I can find, that price has remained stable from the start of the year. In before the lock? Seems like it.

My Miata isn’t due for a change until next July. Out of curiosity, I checked the pricing for five quarts of Castrol on Amazon. A jug is $32, which honestly seems reasonable given the surround news. According to records, the last time I bought the same oil back in 2018, it was $31! That is super surprising. Either Castrol has done the consumer a favor and kept the pricing friendly throughout, or the company has cut corners to the same product. Shrinkflation is a heck of a drug.

It seems, at least for the two particular cars that I own, the great motor oil inflation has yet to reach the shore. Of course I am fully expecting things to change sooner or later, given the lack of end in sight for the Iran war. I’ll simply enjoy the mulligan that I’ve got this time round. Happy motoring!

We're all going to feel it

This morning I woke up from a dream that I'd bought a Mercedes G Wagon, the preferred wealthy housewife car of choice. I knew it was a dream even when I was in the dream because there’s no way I would drop six-figures on a singular automobile. Did that once, enjoyed it, not YOLO-ing like that again. To comfortably afford a car priced in the six-figures, you really should be earning well past the quarter-million mark. Unfortunately, my salary is closer to zero than it is closer to $250,000.

I am happy and grateful for what I already have: the perfect two car solution. A MK7 Volkswagen Golf GTI for the utility factor, and a Mazda MX-5 Miata for pure driving fun. Both combined cost less than what I paid for a brand new BMW M2 back in 2019, which is saying something given the abject inflation that’s gone on since then. Is this German and Japanese duo the ones to ride into the proverbial sunset? Difficult to predict, the future is (Yoda). I’m just really satisfied right now.

And thank god neither of my cars run on diesel. Thanks to the ongoing war with Iran that was supposedly going to end quickly, the oil shock stemming from the Strait of Hormuz closure is finally materializing fully. Here in California, it’s over $8 for a gallon of diesel! Even if you don’t have a personal diesel vehicle (thanks, Volkswagen diesel-gate), the repercussions of such high pump pricing will directly affect your wallet. Commercial transportation is hugely reliant on diesel. Cost of goods sold will continue to trend higher because the cost of shipping is increasing.

Never mind that petroleum is an ingredient in so many products that you wouldn’t think of. As if the AI build-out inflation isn’t already bad enough…

So you EV owners can’t sit there too smugly about your cars not using gas. Though they can be slightly smug at the news of Costco rationing the sale of motor oil and raising prices due to shortages. (The upcoming annual oil change on the GTI is going to cost nearly $100 in materials alone!) But, the downstream negatives of the oil shock will affect us all. This collective hurt is quite the revenge on the individualistic streak so prevalent in American culture.

Klarna pay-in-four at the gas pump, when?

Here we have the GTI in its natural habitat.

Turn it down a notch

Public service announcement: don’t be like me. Don’t chase every little interior rattle in that used car you purchased. It’s not worth the hassle or mental anguish. Take the car for what it is: imperfect. It gets me from point A to point B, and the air conditioning works superbly. What more is there to ask for?

Heck, even new cars are not immune from interior rattles. My 2013 model year Subaru WRX STI is kind of known for a rattly interior. Of course you can take your new car to the dealer to have the technicians there chase the sound for you. But then you’d risk introducing new noises when the techs inevitably take apart the interior to investigate. Or worse, they break a piece and don’t tell you about it. (Don’t ask me how I know.)

You know how just because someone is a pro in one domain, it doesn’t necessarily transfer to other domains? A Michelin three star chef might be horrible at playing pickleball. I think the same framework applies to my innate perfectionism and obsessiveness. Those qualities are a positive when it comes to my job. Attention to detail and comprehensiveness is what gets me paid. Let me sweat the details and point out areas of inadequacy.

The same qualities are a huge negative when applied to my hobbies. The compulsion for perfection sucks out the fun. And that is why we do hobbies, right? For the sheer fun of it. There’s a happy medium between aiming high and self-flagellation for mistakes. A medium I’ve yet to achieved. I just spend a solid hour Googling various causes and fixes for front dash rattles for my Golf GTI. What a waste of time! It’s a used car, the interior is going to make some noises. Get over it.

The problem is: I can’t simply turn down the obsessiveness knob. It’s me. At least the Michelin star chef can readily admit defeat against a pickleball master.

Using the proper fluid

A dirty front windshield is very annoying to me. Because I am an obsessive psychopath. That is why every time I get into the car, I hit the washers to remove the previous day’s detritus off my field of view. It isn’t perfect, of course - only the sections covered by the wipers get cleaned, but it’s good enough.

The constant washing presents a problem: I go through washer fluid by the gallons. (I was amazed to read that some drivers use so little windshield fluid that their cars are still on the factory fill!) Throughout my car owning history, I have bought distilled water at the local grocery store. Distilled because it’s doubly free of minerals, so there’s no chance of leaving water spots on the paint. So far, so easy.

Modern cars have sensor in the washer fluid tank that notifies drivers via the dash when the levels get low. The sensor achieves this by utilizing the water as a conducting loop. When the fluid level is no longer high enough to complete the signal, it then trips the warning light. Pretty intuitive and easy.

On my Golf GTI, however, the warning light remains on even when I’ve just refilled the tank. Turns out, distilled water - lacking any sorts of minerals - isn’t conductive enough to complete the signal loop. Sure there’s water submerging the sensor points, but it’s effectively doing nothing.

The solution is simple: use proper windshield fluid. Therefore, for the first time in my 20 years of driving, I actually filled store-bought washer fluid into one of my cars. A bit of a hassle, since the auto parts store is further away from me than the grocery store. Also, a gallon of windshield fluid is some two dollars more expensive than a gallon of distilled water. Inflation continues…

Half of it is gone

Surprise! Half of 2026 is already gone. I hope you are able to look back and say the past six months has been time well spent. And if you cannot say that for yourself, then it’s time to get off your ass!

I would say my first half of the year has been rather uneventful. But that’s good, right? Boring is good. It is suppose to be boring. Novelty is great, but too much of it means a lack of focus. You pick something to do for a long time and there are for sure going to be dog days.

Much of my weekends in 2026 was focused on getting my new-to-me 2019 VW Golf GTI up to shape. It was exhilarating to wake up on Saturdays with the lastest thing to fix, or the latest item to install. If fairy godparents somehow bestowed upon me the endless money glitch, buying used cars and fixing them up would be something I genuine would do everyday.

Obviously that’s not how reality works. People speak of following passions, but as someone with an entrepreneurial business degree, passion is only the spark. The fuel to sustain the burn is where the proverbial rubber meets the road. Often times people are unwilling to marinate in the minutiae of it all. How are you going to sell your talents? Putting down “it will work out” for the marketing section would have gotten you an F in class.

Or perhaps there isn't fuel to burn at all - the thing you’re passionate about is not financially viable. For me, there’s very little business in fixing up used cars to then not sell. So a hobby it remains. That means for five days out of the week, I have to put in time at a place I’m not nearly as enthused about, in order to be able to do the thing I am super motivated for. And honestly, that in between time can get mighty frustrating. Never mind the other parts of human living that gets in the way, like eating and self care.

Those afflicted with passion can attest to the times when you’re so into doing something, sleep is a mere suggestion. You just want to keep going. And you do!

I think I’ll spend rest of 2026 coming to terms with that fact that my ability to follow my passions is predicated on accepting that it will be cyclical. And that the days without will be way more numerous than the day with. No wonder artists of pre-modern times had moneyed patrons!