My parents cursed me with a strong interest in my vehicles’ mileage. For the past year and a half, we’ve been keeping track of the mileage we get in all of our vehicles, including the motorcycle.

And here’s the verdict thus far. The Ducati is getting a whopping . The new Honda Fit isn’t doing badly at . And finally, my Mercedes bows in at a somewhat-respectable . This isn’t terrible when one considers that I use this car mostly for city driving. On the highway I can easily push 32 MPG.

For the first time in over a decade, I’m not a Volkswagen owner.

We bought a Honda Fit for my wife last February, and put the GTI on a consignment lot. It sold today, and I’m left with a little hole in my heart after abandoning a marque I’ve been with for so long.

My first VW was a ‘90 Golf Diesel. It was speeding-ticket-proof, with its 52 horsepower mill that churned and ground out over 400,000 kilometres before it went on to its next owner.

My next VW was an ‘86 Scirocco. This was my first “true love” - I painted the car a svelte shade of deep silver, and tuned the engine with all sorts of go-fast goodies (for the nerd readers, this included a 290/448 cam, a port-and-polished head, a single-throat Weber throttle body with a port-matched intake, a full cat-less Supersprint header, adjustable cam gear, Boge Turbo struts with H&R springs, front and rear strut braces, and a mean set of Good Year Eagle NCT/2 tires on 14″ 7-spoke rims). Truth be told, the car wasn’t *that* fast, but it sure put a lot of smiles on my face.

I also picked up an ‘81 Scirocco during this time. I wish I still had it - that would have made a perfect rat-rod.

Another car that found its way into my driveway was an ‘84 Rabbit GTI. This is another car I wish I still had; it even had the faux-wood dashboard and plaid seats.

Next car was a ‘97 Golf. This was my first experience with financing a car, and that Golf gave us many, many good miles of service. It’s the car we took with us to Alberta, and it’s the car we tried to take with us to North Carolina. (I’ll save that tale for another blog post)

Last was the GTI. This represented something of an apex for our Volkswagen ownership. We didn’t hold back with this car; it had power-everything, heated leather seats, and that magnificent 180 horsepower turbocharged engine that spanked a lot of cars at the stoplight. The only time this car left us stranded was because of a coil recall, and it didn’t even leave me “in the cold” - it limped its way to the dealer and was promptly fixed.

Alas, the remnants of the VW’s are still around me. I bought the service manuals for every Volkswagen I have ever owned (and a few I didn’t own), and they’re still on my bookshelf. The grease stains from changing the clutch in my Scirocco are still there, as are the notes we made on the inside cover of the manual for the old Golf Diesel.

I still have the Volkswagen hubcap clock that my wife bought me a few years ago.

The odd tools that do-it-yourself Volkswagen mechanics collect are still in my toolbox. This includes the huge allen-key wrench for the transmission, the amp gauge for testing the glowplug draw, and a Momo steering wheel adapter from my old Scirocco.

In fact, I even have the emblem for my Scirocco from the paint job … I chose to “de-badge” that car for the “stealth” look. I never did have the heart to toss that plastic emblem out.

With the exception of my wife’s new Honda Fit, the only non-German car I have ever owned was a 1961 Ford Falcon. Painted in delightful puke-green, it was a sight to behold.

I started to feel the urge a few years ago when I realized that German cars don’t give me a lot of room for interesting road trips. Unknowingly buoyed by a friend of mine who had an amazing broken-down-Chrysler adventure in Northern Alberta, I decided that my fourteen years of staid German reliability needed to come to an end.

And yesterday, I found myself at a local British car show, looking around with some rather serious intent to purchase.

British cars are the antithesis of German cars. With a German car, you get in it and go. You know that a bevy of engineering doctorates have poured over every square centimetre of the car, and you know it’s going to work regardless of the weather. You pay for the privilege, but it has its long-term benefits. With just over 70,000 miles (~112,000 km) on the clock, my Mercedes doesn’t even squeak when it goes over a bump. The only repair I can recall is having the radio replaced because one of the volume buttons would occasionally stick.

In a British car, we’re rather pleased that it works at all. German cars don’t drip oil. English cars don’t believe in keeping oil for much longer than a few hours. When I was pulling out of the show yesterday, I noticed one fellow in a Lotus who was waiting to check in. There was green antifreeze streaming out from under his car. I jogged over to tell him; he brushed this off as a regular thing, and said they always travel with a few extra gallons of antifreeze in the trunk.

So why on Earth would I want to induce this kind of unreliability that would give most German car owners seizures? The answer is simple: British cars are just charming.

True, most of them have engines with the engineering deftness of a prewar John Deere. True, most of them rust profusely. True, most of them have poorer acceleration than my old Volkswagen diesel. True, most of them have convertible tops that are baffled by even a few meager rain drops. And true that the electrical systems in most British cars are considered a fire risk (there’s some truth to the old saying: “If Lucas Electric made guns, we wouldn’t have wars.”)

But who can resist the charm of an MGB?

The truth is, the owners I met at the show yesterday displayed one marvelous trait lacking in German car owners: they were incredibly relaxed. That they made it to the show in one piece was itself a cause for celebration, and there seemed to be an unspoken understanding that with a British car, you’ll get there when God intends for you to arrive. If you make it, you’ll arrive in tremendous style (as the gentleman in the Rolls Royce Silver Cloud demonstrated), and if you don’t make it, people will understand why.

I have a serious hankering for an early model MGB - the ones with the chrome bumpers. I also get weak in the knees when I see the original Triumph Spitfires. Of course, the Jaguar 120’s that were there were enough to cause spontaneous marriage infidelity, but I’m not quite ready for that.

That’s 5.85 litres per 100 kilometres for the rest of the world.

And that’s pretty damn good for a brand-new car that’s only rated for 34 MPG in the city, and 39 MPG on the highway.

Now, for my beef. We paid extra for the Honda MusicLink iPod “integration”, and it sucks shit. I’ll save the long-winded rant for another day … but suffice to say that I’d get better integration with a plain old “line in” jack on the radio. I put a call in to Honda Customer Service today … we’ll see what they can do …

Our new Honda Fit is safe and sound in our driveway now. I took it out for a spin last night, and was pleasantly surprised with the handling of this car. For a rather cheap econobox it handles nicely, and the little VTEC engine has enough get-up-and-go to get the job done.

We’re now in the process of selling the GTI. And for the first time in thirteen years, I will not be a Volkswagen owner.