Last weekend, I finally ended the last chapter of a nightmare that has dominated much of the past nearly three years of my life. Two men stopped by my parents’ house, pushed my 2002 Audi TT Quattro down the driveway, then dragged it away with a truck and a tow strap. That Audi was my dream car, yet seeing it roll away made me smile. In fact, the last time I was this happy to see a car go away was when a tow truck hauled away my old diesel Ford Econoline van, and the sales of both vehicles relate to the same nightmare.
I first started collecting cars back in 2016. My car collection started almost entirely by chance after my 2012 Smart Fortwo caught fire. I leveraged my connections at Smart USA to score a brand new 2016 Smart Fortwo Edition #1. The dealership was supposed to take my 2012 Smart as a trade, but gave me the trade-in value and just let me keep the car, anyway. Suddenly, I had two cars despite having only planned on having one. Since then, I have purchased over cheap 30 motorcycles and over cheap 25 cars. Basically, I have dirt cheap rent and spend all of my money on cars. I would sell most of these vehicles later on, only keeping my favorites. As of today, that means 15 cars, 4 motorcycles, 1 bus, and 1 fiberglass camper.
A Short-Lived Dream
One of my favorite purchases was this 2002 Audi TT Quattro. I picked it up in late 2020 and this car was another piece of physical proof that dreams can come true. I’ve loved the first-generation Audi TT ever since I drove one in Gran Turismo 3 some 22 years ago. And yes, this one was in a sort of weird configuration of having the 180 HP engine and Quattro. Countless people have called me stupid saying that such a configuration doesn’t exist, but they’re wrong. I love the TT so much that I bought a ZipZaps version of it.
Remember RadioShack’s ZipZaps? My enjoyment with this car would be short-lived and the vast majority of my near three-year ownership of the car was like an albatross around my neck.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, I got laid off and suddenly found myself with tons of free time. I decided that instead of moping around my tiny apartment, I’d make my automotive desires come true. I picked up that Audi TT, a Buell Lightning, a Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI, another Smart Fortwo, and even a Harley-Davidson Sportster. Of course, 2020 is when I met my wife, Sheryl. Our second real date (or what we call our second real date) was a 5,000-mile road trip across the country in a little four-cylinder Ford Ranger.
Against the odds, 2020 was looking great. I even picked up a beat-up Volkswagen Passat W8 with a manual transmission as a restoration project. And my off-road rig? A 2006 Ford E-350 Power Stroke van.
I loved that van. It was one of the seemingly few 6.0-liter Power Strokes that worked well and its limited-slip differential made it unexpectedly decent when the going got rough. Sheryl and I took it on a Gambler 500 run, but not before giving it a parody NASA theme complete with “Free 10mm Sockets” spray-painted on the side. Little did I know that this van would kick off a series of unfortunate events.
My Nightmare
My problems started when I brought the van home with its new livery. The apartment complex that I live in does have an association, but the rules here are bizarre for what’s more or less an HOA.
There’s no rule about how your car has to look, but the association says that it has to run and drive. You also cannot have a vehicle with more than four doors. What qualifies as a door? Minivans technically have five doors if you count the tailgate. A Chevy Astro or any van with double doors also has five doors. This rule has never been explained. Another rule is that the vehicle parked at the complex cannot have business markings.
Knowing the bylaws, I figured I’d be just fine parking my rally van at home. After all, there are no rules against having an ugly car! My neighbor disagreed and was apparently offended by “Free 10mm Sockets” joke painted on the van, thinking it was some ploy to draw in children. At any rate, this neighbor also calls me “it” so her complaint about the van was likely a cover for what she really doesn’t like about me.
Anyway, she called up her friend at property management, who called up a tow company. That tow company dragged away three of my cars and tried to take a fourth.
Every reason given didn’t make sense. The association said that the van had graffiti on it, my Passat W8 supposedly didn’t have a parking pass, and my Passat TDI wasn’t even given a reason. In doing these tows, the association also broke its own rules, which state that a vehicle’s owner is to be contacted and warned before a tow. I only discovered that my cars were disappearing when I went outside to take pictures of the W8.
Retrieving the vehicles was another hassle. All of the cars were towed either in park or in gear. The W8’s clutch was seemingly fused engaged. I tried a bunch of troubleshooting, including an on-the-spot fluid flush, but the clutch just wouldn’t let go. And the other Passat wouldn’t engage drive. Only the van moved under its own power.
My wife (then my fiancee), the attorney that she is, saw all of this to be too suspicious and recommended that I take legal action. After all, the reasons given by the condo association didn’t make sense and the tow company seemed super sketchy.
To illustrate how crazy this was, up above are my three cars in the “tow yard.” Yes, that’s a residential backyard. There were no fences, gates, or signs. There was even nothing stopping me from just hopping into any car and driving off. Heck, there weren’t even any cameras.
Through the case, we learned that the tow company didn’t have a yard (that part was obvious), a license for the truck, or a business license, and the guy who performed the tow wasn’t even an employee. Its insurance documents weren’t legitimate, either. In other words, some guy essentially winched my cars across a parking lot and took them to his mom’s backyard.
The cases raged on for over a year and I learned more interesting things. We identified at least 50 vehicles breaking the bylaws, but curiously, they’ve never been towed. To this day, there’s a van with plates four years expired, four flat tires, and a family of creatures living under it. It’s never so much gotten a warning.
How My Audi Became Illegal
Eventually, I settled my cases, collected my payout, and bought more dream cars. The litigation wasn’t fun. Lawsuits are never as quick and simple as they seem on television.
While the suits were ongoing, I received death threats from friends of the tow company and my cars got vandalized multiple times. A quartet of meth heads also stole all of my tools, a brand new set of mud tires, and that Power Stroke van. And they did it all in -20 degree temps in the middle of winter. When the van got stolen, the meth enthusiasts spray-painted the wheels a different color and then parked it just 200 feet away from where they stole it. They then turned it into a rolling meth lab and tried upgrading it like a discount version of Overhaulin’.
When the van was recovered, the police couldn’t believe that anyone would be so stupid to steal such a crappy vehicle. That night, I found myself in an interrogation room for over an hour while officers told variations of the story that I told them, with critical facts wrong. Sheryl tells me that they were trying to catch me in a lie about the theft. I didn’t lie, some jerks really did steal my shitbox! After that night, I ran a FOIA request on my city and learned that the meth heads told the police that I gave them the van. Police thought that the van theft was so dumb that I had to be a part of the meth ring somehow.
Anyway, while all of that was happening, these fiends tried stealing my Audi TT.
They pried out one of the windows, stole all of the vehicle’s documents, stole my Gambler 500 ring, and tried to make off with the car. Thankfully, my laziness paid off because the car had a bad starter that I hadn’t gotten around to replacing. Doubly thankfully, the goofs didn’t know that bump-starting is a thing that you can do with a manual transmission.
On their way out, the thieves also made off with one windshield wiper and the car’s battery.
Stealing the car’s documents put me in a tough spot. I don’t remember why, but for some really dumb reason, I had the car’s title in the glovebox. Yes, leaving the title to your vehicle in the vehicle is some smooth-brain stuff. I know, I learned the lesson the hard way. Anyway, they made off with the title, but not the car. The local police said that they would report the vehicle as stolen so that the thieves couldn’t transfer the title. At the time, this seemed like the best plan.
Not long later, one of the thieves set his girlfriend’s car on fire. Police found him living in the rafters of a nearby garage that he broke into. His buddies were also caught and all of them are still in prison today. My tools and tires were found in that garage and I bet my title was there, too, but none of it was ever returned to me.
Just to twist the knife in a little further, the meth heads had destroyed the van’s ignition so badly that it no longer started. When my court cases concluded I scrapped it for $400. The Illinois Secretary of State (our DMV) was no help in making the Audi legal again. Every DMV bureaucrat that Sheryl and I talked to said that the car is still stolen and I cannot get another title for it. Sheryl spent a year trying to lawyer the car into legality again.
Eventually, she found a path to make the TT legal again, but it would have taken tons of time and around $2,000. I’d get a registration, but I’d have a TT with a damaged A-pillar, a branded title, and I’d have to deal with the deterioration caused by the car sitting for two years. Oh, and it was time for a new timing belt. I decided it wasn’t worth it and had her list the car for sale.
What’s Wrong With People?
Somehow, the misery with this car still wasn’t over. As I said before, I’ve bought and sold over 50 vehicles; most of those purchases and sales happened on Facebook. If you’ve never sold a vehicle on Facebook or Craigslist before, consider yourself lucky. Sometimes, things have gotten downright toxic. In early 2019, I listed a project Suzuki GSX1100G for $500. One prospective buyer asked to come over to take a look. I gave him my address, but he decided to offer me $200 before even leaving. I declined and told him that my price was firm. In response, he threatened to kill me. Thankfully, I wasn’t murdered! The motorcycle was sold to someone else for my asking price.
That kind of stuff I’m used to. I’ve gotten enough death threats that I try to do all sales at a place I don’t live. People, even readers of Jalopnik, have sent me enough threats that I don’t even use my real city on Facebook. So, I thought I’ve seen it all, but things have gotten really weird lately.
This is what happened last month when my wife tried to buy a cheap set of 5×112 wheels for one of my Jettas. There’s a whole conversation there, but the seller said things that I will not show here. Just know that it was disheartening:
Some Facebook stalking revealed that this wasn’t a troll, this guy actually believed what he was spitting out. This wasn’t our first rodeo with messages like these online, but it was new to find it when trying to buy something. I chalked it up to a fluke. You know, we just so happened to find the weirdo who doesn’t want money for very little effort.
Then I got a weird insult about my identity when I tried buying a Smart Fortwo Cabriolet. And the messages we got about the TT? They were so bad that Sheryl deleted most of them and blocked the people. One of the blocked people went as far as to use a fake account to spam my Facebook and Instagram. Apparently, he then spent quite a bit of time messaging similar messages to my friends.
Honestly, it dragged me down from my normally bubbly state. Over the past year, I’ve felt like people in my local area have been getting a bit more hostile towards trans people, but I’ve been thinking maybe I’m just imagining things. Well, maybe not. I just wanted to sell my own stolen car! Buy the car or don’t, there’s no need to write thousand-word screeds about what’s in my pants.
A Happy Ending
At one point, I was getting ready to call up my favorite scrapper. I would have gotten something like $250 and the car would have seen the business end of a crusher, but at least I would have been rid of the car. But, I wanted to see the car live on, somehow, so we put up with it a little longer.
Thankfully, a buyer showed up with a great idea. He has a Volkswagen Squareback at home with a rotted-out floor. Instead of replacing the floor, he wants to cut the floor out, cut everything off from above the floor of my TT, and mate the Squareback body with the TT’s pan, thus making a 180 HP Quattro Squareback. [Editor’s Note: Hot damn! – JT] This is sort of what I was thinking. The TT may never be road legal again, so I was hoping it would become a racecar or a project. The buyer showed up, gave me a wad of cash, and dragged away his loot. He was even able to get it started and drive it home. Hopefully, the car will serve him well.
I’d long thought that I’d be sad to see the Audi drive away, but I was really happy. Finally, after over two years, I’m finally done with this stupid saga. I feel like I can finally move on from this dark time in my life and not have a daily reminder of the past. Even better, the car’s going to live on as a crazy build. The Audi TT remains one of my dream cars, so I will be getting another. If I’m lucky, my next one will be a convertible with the baseball glove seats, and it won’t be stored anywhere near my neighbors.
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What the hell is wrong with people? Good grief.
That Squareback project sounds like a winner, though.
The short answer: people suck. 🙁
The long answer is (IMO) it’s a bell curve. The majority of people in the middle are okay – not great, not terrible, just meh.
On one side of the curve you have the people who are the real gems – very positive, awesome folks.
Which leaves the other side of the curve: the Scheisstaschen und Arschlöcher who can’t manage just to be miserable on their own, but try to make others miserable too.
Unfortunately the SuA are much louder than the good or meh people.
You’re not wrong. There is a minority of people who are complete, unabashed bigots, and they are vocal.
What’s really funny are the ones who will be nice to you when you’re giving them something they want (including sex!), but as soon as you deny them something they think they’re entitled to…they start insulting you. All of a sudden, it’s an issue that you’re Black/Hispanic/Asian/gay/fat/transgender/non-binary/neuro-atypical.
I’ve been called the N-word plenty of times on Grindr by guys who, in the previous chat bubble, were asking me to do them in front of their wives.
Bet you Mrs. Mercedes wouldn’t have endured that if she’d been giving the guy a deal on something.
I think you nailed it with the word “entitled”. That seems to be the source of a lot of jackassery and bigotry: “I deserve/should have X because of Y”, with no thought given to the reality of the situation.
A lot of folks are not great at introspection, but the ones who need it the most won’t even try.
Actually the internet has given certain people just too much access to us and the real world. Back when they only had their families to argue with it was fine. Now we all get exposed to them.
As Mike Tyson said: “Social media made y’all way to[o] comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”
You dodged a bullet. Despite how pretty they are, they drive like VW golfs with bad visibility. I’ve never been so let down by a car before. I too adored them, had RC versions (Tyco?) and when a buddy finally got a 225 6spd, I was stoked. Then I drove it. MEH. Super underwhelming, wasn’t fun to drive, visibility was terrible.
Also, you should move. If there are a bunch of methheads running around you should get a different place to live; think of how much trouble and time you’ve had to waste because of them.
Thankfully, they’re currently behind bars. According to the reports I obtained, the police cleaned out a few buildings in my neighborhood. In a weird way, my van helped them bust the ring. I guess they got a little too methy and crossed the wrong person. lol
Anyway, you bet I’m trying to move! I have my eyes on a firehouse in the middle of nowhere. All of the cars get to sleep inside! Sadly, no pole to slide down.
Dan Aykroyd would be devastated.
It’s not often you get to experience reading one hellva story like this, hot damn.
On one hand, it’s great you got rid of something you call a nightmare and wanted to get rid of.
On the other hand, what the actual fuck is wrong with people, sheesh.
Some people need a high five. In the face. With a cinder block.
I’m not sure I agree with your username…
I can’t believe how shitty people are. Is the cheap rent the only thing keeping you living in that place because I would have bailed a long time ago. Such a horrible string of events you had to deal with.
I expected a story of mechanical woes but holy fuck this was so much worse. People suck.
My sentiments exactly. Thanks for stating so eloquently.
That is a fucked up story. My god. I can’t understand how hard it is to live and let live with these fuckwads. Keep up the good work, love your articles here.
I can’t imagine enduring all of that on top of every other modern indignity that drags us all down daily. I love your articles and I’m so glad you’re here.
I always chuckle when the bigots unknowingly fully accept one aspect of the person they purport to hate as part of their screed. It’s its own fun little self-own added to the potpourri of poo coming from them.
I also would like updates on the future of the TT. I only requested updates on one vehicle I sold (Caprice Wagon heading to the demo derby) but it was worth it. (3 time champion vehicle!)
“They win by making you think you’re alone”
-Zorii Bliss
In the ZipZaps photo I spy Starship Enterprises, so YAY!
Second, it’s a shame Gossin couldn’t resurrect the TT.
Third, shitty people are abhorrent.
Wait, that’s not Gossin’s truck pulling it away, is it?! 😉
It’s time to move to somewhere with less meth heads and effing idiots.
May I suggest California, get away from snow, but you’ll gain the odd earthquake that you may or may not feel every four or five years.
We have a nice place picked out. It’s a retired firehouse in the middle of nowhere with enough space for maybe ~30 cars. With luck, we’ll be able to get it this summer!
Does it still have the Fireman’s pole intact? ( yes, I’m serious)
“I think this building should be condemned. There’s serious metal fatigue in all the load-bearing members, the wiring is substandard, it’s completely inadequate for our power needs, and the neighborhood is like a demilitarized zone.”
The next thing you know, Mercedes will be buying a Miller-Meteor Cadillac ambulance. Either way, that sounds excellent.
I always wanted to run a restaurant out of a firehouse.
The fire of indigestion for free?
Hot damn, sounds like a dream there. There’s a couple here that rehabbed an old firehouse into a lovely home, it’s charming as hell. Not as much parking space as it’s in the city, but yeah I love that place.
FWIW, you’re my favorite writer here; the others are great too, don’t get me wrong, but I love the variety you bring here (especially the vintage train articles). And these bigot scum make my blood boil.
Everyone else is saying Ghostbusters, but consider Herbie Rides Again, which also takes place in a firehouse. If summoning an army of animate aircooled Beetles to defend yourself from jerks isn’t the most Autopian thing, I’ll eat my hat.
Wow. You’ve been through a lot of bullshit recently. I’m glad we have you here sharing it all, but I’m sorry you go through any of that, much less the combination of all of it.
Mercedes, My blood was boiling as I read your post. I still cannot believe that in the year 2023 there are still people out there that are so hateful and ignorant. (((SMH)))
I particularly enjoyed the part where he talks about normal people…
Normal people don’t throw hateful invective at strangers and then create a burner account to continue when they are blocked. I could feel brain cells dying trying to read his sentences.
Hopefully he won’t procreate!
Yeah, homedude was out of his effing mind on that one.
I would imagine that 10 – 15% of the country is indeed that hateful and ignorant.
mean people suck
I’m afraid you’re shooting low.
And I am afraid that you are right. 🙁
I had someone threaten to kill me over a glass mannequin head on FB Market. I did not want to just give it to him, which he felt so unreasonable that he insinuated myself and my whole family would shortly be murdered. I almost wish he had the balls to have tried to go thru with it. People like to hide behind their keyboards, even when using real names. It’s not hard to do a search and find out all you need to, for you know, future circumstances. On to your own hellish story , it sounds like you need to upgrade your living situation rather than your car collection.
The “Free 10mm Sockets” gag never gets old and makes me laugh every single time.
I’ve gone on record many times saying that HOAs are perhaps the greatest unacknowledged threat to American freedoms. Typically it’s a bunch of nosy parkers with nothing better to do with their time than get in everyone else’s business, and there are no real checks and balances on their abuse of power as you and Sheryl have found. And, you did better than the vast majority of folks because Sheryl is a bulldog in getting things done and knows how to utilize her professional experience. That it gets combined with such personal animosity is even more distressing. It sucks you’ve had to go through that.
So here’s some words of encouragement: I’ve appreciated your writing since the old German lighting site days and will be forever grateful you were the one who pulled me out of the grays. I was thrilled to see you come on board at the Autopian. It’s interesting, too, because I could actually give a flying rip about RVs and motorcycles – two things I never, ever plan to own – yet I read every single thing you write about those subjects with great enthusiasm. Keep up the great work and I hope to meet you and Sheryl sometime at an Autopian gathering.
If you still want one here’s hoping another 1st gen TT falls in your lap.
I am house hunting right now and one of our hard requirements is absolutely no HOAs.
I end up telling this story a lot whenever HOAs are brought up:
When I was a kid, my family lived in a neighborhood with an HOA for a while. My dad, who was an HVAC tech/electrician, had his company work truck banned almost immediately after we moved in after a neighbor reported it. He was able to get his company to provide him with an unmarked Econoline van, since there were no rules against it. Well, THAT vehicle was also reported to the HOA by another neighbor, who claimed it was “blocking her view of the road.” (It wasn’t; it was legally street parked in front of our own house.) Regardless, the HOA banned that vehicle, too.
Since my family only had one other vehicle, my dad made an agreement with the owner of a warehouse just outside the neighborhood to let him park his work van there overnight and walk to and from our house when he was coming from or leaving to go to work. This worked out fine for months, until one night, someone called the cops on him for “trespassing” on the warehouse property. He gets out of his van and is immediately forced to the ground by three cops, guns drawn, and is held there for 45 minutes until they could contact the warehouse owner and confirm he had permission to be there. Needless to say we didn’t live in that neighborhood for long after that.
So yeah…my dad was nearly shot by the police because of an HOA. Never again.
Let’s dissect this story (as my jaw falls closer and closer to the ground):
I’m glad blood doesn’t boil easily, because this story had me seething. I’d have sued, especially the police.
Yup, you pretty much got it (although I don’t think we know for sure that it was the same neighbor who reported both vehicles…we know who reported the second one for the view-blocking BS, I don’t think that we figured out who did it the first time. It honestly could have been one of several people based on other experiences we had with other neighbors….)
What horrifies me is that at the time my parents (at least to us kids) laughed it off as a “haha remember the time that Dad got held at gunpoint by the cops?” I guess that was just their way of coping with it and not wanting us to worry. It wasn’t until I was an adult looking back that I realized just how ghoulish the whole situation was. I’m convinced that if my dad hadn’t been white he probably would’ve been shot that night.
In the interest of a little levity…
A couple years ago for Xmas, I got the mechanically-inclined nephew a socket holder with about 10 10mm sockets on it. He got the joke and was quite amused. 🙂
I hope you keep in touch with the madman – this sounds like a project that needs to be featured here!
Nearly everyone else you’ve described above needs a good kick in the teeth.
1000Xthis. We NEED an update on that squareback project.
So sorry you and your wife have to put up with so many terrible people, Mercedes. This is the sort of thing that has us thinking seriously about moving abroad. My wife has EU citizenship, so it would be relatively easy for us to do. We don’t really want to leave, but holy hell, I really worry about the state of things in the USA right now.
Sorry methheads dont have teeth. Lol
Holly crap, what you have to put up with is beyond compare!
Hopefully, you’ll find another dream car to replace the nightmare
It’s hard to find a good 1st gen TT at a reasonable price (they still look good if they’ve been taken care of!) but I wish you luck with your search for a new one.
Ended up settling for a 2nd gen myself but it was too good of a deal to pass ????
I am astonished at how many crazy people there are in the world. That “tow company” should have been done for theft, and the meth heads deserve what they got. I hope the Squareback project succeeds so your TT rises from the ashes
God this whole story gets progressively more and more infuriating. At the risk of this comment not making it through the filters:
F*** ALL of the bigoted POSes mentioned, especially the scum who calls you “it”.
F*** the cops for their victim blaming and overall apathy.
F*** the idiot who stole your paperwork, hurting not only you but your poor defenseless Audi. I’m glad it at least gets to live on in car Valhalla as a ridiculous new build.
That one in particular. How could you try and deny someone their humanity, and still feel like you’re better than they are?
If you’ve descended to calling a trans person “it,” you are the worst kind of being.
The venom spewed by the right is what emboldens these clowns, not to mention JK Rowling and her vitriol about Trans people. I’m so sorry you had to deal with this Mercedes!! Keep with that bubbly personality, we all love you here!
I’m amazed they even try to keep a straight face when they say “It’s not hate, we just want to protect women’s sports.” When’s the last time one of these doughy old men went to a WNBA game anyway?
Apartment living and car collections don’t blend well, I remember just trying to have 2 cars and a motorcycle living in townhouse style was a hassle, and stored my bike 5 months out of the year. But that all sounds like major suckage, our neighborhood has some crazies with the meth but they’re the ones actually fixing cars out of their backyards(at least I assume that from the Mercury Mountaineer with the busted windshield up on ramps in the street at the neighborhood entrance for the past 2 months). Unibody swaps seem to be growing as an automotive thing, probably says something about the styling of new cars if people like the chassis and features but feel like they need to take a saw to them and drop an entirely different body on them from a 30+ year old car.
Oh yeah, there’s a reason I have 4 different storage plots. The neat thing is that I’m allowed 4 vehicles at my apartment, so the number wasn’t the problem!
You need to move. Maybe to a different state and not just residence. I live in redneck central but don’t get hassled too much since I’m the “right” color and sexual preference. But I swear, assuming I’m physically able, once my remaining parent passes on, I’m moving the fuck out of here.
one of my dream cars was an Audi s4 and I was able to find a good low mileage used one about 10 years ago. They depreciate a lot so it was a steal. No one told me I shouldn’t have a nice car if I live in an apartment. Within the first week, I came outside one morning and the entire hood was caved in like someone got body slammed on it. A month after that one of my neighbors hit the rear quarter panel pulling in or out of a parking space. She denied it was her, but she transferred paint which matched her car and the damage lined up perfectly with hers and the cops agreed it was definitely her so she gave me her insurance info. Almost every time I came outside I saw new door dings and scuffs. You cannot have a nice car if you live in apartments, period.
Never will understand people who care what the person on the other side of a cash transaction looks like.
If their money is green, who gives even the tiniest fraction of a shit about anything else?
Depressingly, it seems like too many still do.
Idk man, ive someone has a rebel flag as a profile pic, I just don’t deal with them.
Yeah but that’s like refusing to deal with dishonest people. Being trans doesn’t make you bad, being a lost causer does though
How much you want to bet that person with a rebel flag pfp also complains about “participation trophies?”
There is an entire Facebook group for unibody swaps