I’m an automotive journalist by trade. I’m also a terrible car enthusiast. As much as I love cars, I always feel like I’ve never been able to really dive into the hobby. Year by year, I’m trying to right my wrongs, and slowly, I’m coming good. It took me 33 years, but finally—I bought my dream car.
I’ve loved cars since I was a kid. I had the Hot Wheels, the RC cars, and I religiously watched Top Gear—and I’m talking old Top Gear. I got my license as quickly as I possibly could. I grew up thinking my first car was going to be a Nissan Silvia, and I’d join the JDM hoons on a journey of boost and self-discovery. A Skyline GT-R would follow shortly after.
But somehow I never had the money. The years passed, prices rose, and by my early 20s, I realized it was all over. I’d never own one. The cars I lusted after grew ever more distant on the horizon, and my dreams began to fade.
Big Mistake
The truth is, my career choices had gotten in the way. I was supposed to be a smart kid, and the world was to be my oyster. I was going to study to be an engineer because it seemed like I’d enjoy that line of work. Every adult in my life promised me that this would bring me wealth and riches the likes of which they’d never seen.
Pursuing a degree meant spending most of my waking hours at university. I didn’t grow up in money, so I worked a side job to pay for essentials like beer, fried chicken, and fuel. I drove a 1992 Ford Falcon for most of my uni days, which in itself was a huge mistake. That thing cost me so much in fuel and registration, it’s not even funny.
As I grew up, my friends who avoided uni were putting their money into tires and turbo kits. “That’s okay, I’ll get around to it when I get a real job,” I thought. “I’m gonna be rich, it’ll be great. I’m gonna get that GT-R one day.”
Fast forward a few years, and I landed myself a job with one of the world’s biggest automakers. I was a graduate engineer, and every adult I knew was patting me on the back. On paper, it sounded like a dream. A career with an internationally-renowned brand, in my professional field of choice. I had it made, right?
The reality was anything but. I was barely getting paid more than if I’d just started working full-time at the hardware store from my uni days. I was stuck living in an expensive city, and I’d made the foolish mistake of taking a company lease car because I thought professionals were supposed to drive new.
I was living paycheck to paycheck and was generally miserable. The future wasn’t bright, either. A few of us graduates got together and spoke to someone who’d been through the program a few years ahead of us. When we found out he was only earning $2,000 more a year than us, we all quit within three months. I moved on to a more lucrative job in marketing because of a dumb joke I made at pre-drinks one night. I basically only scored it because I’m charismatic in interview situations and I know how to use Facebook.
At this point, I realized I’d gotten to age 25 and I’d never had a proper enthusiast car. I loved cars, but I’d never done the car thing. My life was passing me by and I needed to get involved. By this point, Silvias and GT-Rs were well outside of my price range, and I was only just earning a notch above shit money. Instead, I scraped together $3,000 for a Mazda MX-5, and I tried to become a car guy.
The MX-5 wasn’t bad. I loved the top-down lifestyle, but I hated how slow it was. It had shit paint, a shit interior, and as much rizz as the captain of the high school math battalion [Ed note: That’s what they call it in Australia? Way tougher than Math Team – MH {Editor’s Note to Editor’s Note: And way way tougher than “mathlete.” – JT}] . I built it into a handling weapon, and it was great in the corners, but it disappointed me every time I hit the throttle.
Eventually, I put it up for sale, and sold it for $10,000 in 30 minutes flat. When the tow truck hauled it away, I never looked back.
Righting Past Wrongs
The intervening years were tough. I got another shitty engineering job for slightly less shitty pay, working in a shitty office with miserable old men. But along the way I’d picked up writing as a side gig. My fortunes started to pay.
It wasn’t my chosen career, but I started making decent money with far less bullshit than before. After a few years, I pivoted into writing about cars. I was doing better, but I still didn’t have real money. I had to choose my moves carefully. I picked up my Volvo 740 Turbo for $750. After I dumped that, I went with a cheap Mercedes-Benz for $2,650 and misstepped with a ridiculous BMW for $3,700. Each had its charms, but I didn’t really connect with any of them. Each was simply an attempt to buy the coolest ride I possibly could on a very limited budget.
Eventually, I decided I needed to ditch my fleet. Both the Merc and BMW were causing me trouble, and I wanted something properly fun again. I browsed the classifieds and contemplated dropping a few grand on an old Peugeot convertible, or maybe an Astra. Cheap, disposable fun, I thought. But then something else caught my eye.
Love At First Boost
There it was. An Audi TT. Not a car I’d ever considered owning, but there it was. Knowing nothing about them, I clicked through to the ad, and my eyebrows raised a little higher. 225 horsepower—more than anything I’d ever owned. It was a roadster, to boot.
Somehow, I realized this could actually tick all my boxes. It wasn’t another compromise like the cheap drop tops I’d been looking at. It wasn’t just front-wheel-drive that was mildly warmed over. It was quick, turbo, and all-wheel-drive. Plus it looked sick on those aftermarket wheels.
At $7,500, it was way more than I planned to spend. I held out for weeks. I had a move to pay for, and I still had two German sedans sitting like a millstone around my neck. But when my Merc finally sold, I couldn’t resist. I made the call.
The test drive went well. It started up on the first go, with the pleasant low-pitched thrum of a modern VW four-cylinder. The 1.8-liter turbo paired well with the short gearing. It wanted to be let off the leash. “PSHHH-tahhhh,” went the blow-off valve. “PSHHHH-tahhhh.” The owner politely asked me to stop hitting boost before it warmed up, and I obliged, chuckling all the while.
At this point, there was no question; it had to come home with me.
I realized that this could actually be my dream car. Something that would light up my senses in the way the turbo Nissans had whenever I’d ridden in them before. The rush was real every time I leaned into the pedal. The prospect of doing so with the top down excited me in a naughty way, like the first time you dare to fantasize about a crush.
Realistically, I knew it wouldn’t all be smooth sailing. The car had no service history, and the owner was coy when I grilled him about any work that needed to be done.
Ultimately, though, I knew I had to have it. That test drive made one thing clear: this was my dream car.
I’d never thought about the Audi TT this way before, but it had everything I’d ever wanted. This thing was quick. This thing was turbo, and it made all the right noises. It was a roadster. And it was all-wheel-drive.
Most importantly, it wasn’t a compromise. I wasn’t going to have to talk it down every time I went out. I wasn’t driving the base model or the lower-end version of something good. This was the good one! I wouldn’t be saying “Yeah, I wish it was the quattro 225,” or “It’d be great if it was a manual.” Why? Because I HAD THE QUATTRO 225 with SIX SPEED STICK!
I’ve never had the good version of anything before. This was a big deal for me. This was my Holy Grail, to use an Autopianism.
Yeah, I know. It’s not actually the fastest car in the world. And Audi would eventually release a V6 model with more power a few years down the line. But for me? This thing was a rocketship. I suspected it had been tuned, because it simply felt too good.
I realized this was my chance to own a car I fucking loved. Not something vaguely related to something good. Not something that was just quirky or cool. A car that would make me grin like a fucking idiot when I matted the pedal.
I went in eyes wide open. I decided I was ready to spend a few thousand bucks up front in maintenance if necessary. I had my fears about the service history, and I’d noticed a few things on the test drive too. But I also knew that it was time. I was going to own a car that truly set my brain alight.
Getting to Know You
Transaction made, I drove the car home and started getting to know it better. The steering felt good, as did the engine. Still, I had to be sure that the timing belt was okay before I put real miles on it. I elected to take it into a mechanic to get that swapped out ASAP.
Hilariously, dumb luck meant I didn’t need to worry. After a long hunt for a good Audi specialist, I found one across town. When I took it in, they chuckled and told me they’d seen the car regularly from an earlier owner. They confirmed that the wheels, tires, and clutch were all virtually brand new. They were also able to advise me that the timing belt had been done only a few years ago, so it was still within its safe service life of five years. That put me in a good mood, and I mentally filed away a note to get it done next year on schedule.
Of course, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. This is a 24-year-old car we’re talking about, and a Volkswagen product to boot. Something had to be wrong, and indeed, several somethings were.
First up, the convertible top. It works… mostly. The switch that detects when it’s popped open is a little finicky. It often requires some manual manipulation to realize the top has actually popped open, before it will activate the motors to lower it down. I can’t find much about this online, nor new replacement parts. I might have to disassemble and clean or replace the windscreen-mounted switch myself.
I had a horror moment when I drove top-down to a nearby supermarket. I went to close the top, and it wouldn’t budge an inch. I had to abandon my shopping trip and lock the car up at home. After some research, I gingerly pulled the top closed manually, hoping not to damage the hydraulics. I read horror stories about people having to replace hydraulic pumps and refill them with eyedroppers and it all sounded like hell.
Amazingly, though, the German car gods took mercy on me. It was just that finicky switch playing up again. The car had assumed the top was already closed, so it wasn’t letting me fire the motors to close it. A quick finger-toggle of the switch got everything humming once again and the top has since opened and closed without issue.
The wind deflector, though, is similarly non-operational. I didn’t know to check for this because I didn’t know the car had one. If I’m lucky, a cheap replacement of the toothed drive belt should fix it. If not, I’m probably up for a set of threaded drives or even complete motors. This one isn’t a big priority for me, though.
More annoying is the heat, or more accurately, the lack of it. While the air-con works great, the heater simply doesn’t. I was worried about big problems with the heater core or coolant circuits, but I think I might have gotten lucky here. I did feel some heat coming out of the footwell vents only, while the face vents were occasionally blowing foam. Research has told me that the blend door is probably at fault. This lives inside the dash, and controls the flow of hot or cold air through the HVAC system. It’s coated in foam which eventually degrades. When that happens, the blend door is essentially full of holes and no longer functions. Covering the blend door in a layer of aluminum tape or similar is enough to fix it.
The key fobs don’t work, either, for some reason. I’ve tried changing the batteries, and I’ve tried a number of “resync” methods I’ve read about online, none of which have worked. I’m sure I can figure out the problem eventually; here’s hoping it doesn’t require an expensive new module or three.
The most concerning problem, though, is the power steering. While the car drove fine when I first got it, a recent early morning run scared the hell out of me. It was just 50 degrees out and frosty, and my German roadster sounded like a bus. I feared the worst but kept my head. I eventually realized it was making the noise solely while cornering. My insight told me to check the power steering fluid, which was a little low.
I topped it up, and have had no problems since. With that said, that fluid had to have gone somewhere. I’m hoping it’s a very slow drip that only needs periodic attention. Worst case, I’m up for a new steering rack. I haven’t had the guts to figure out what that’s going to cost me just yet.
The Honeymoon Phase
I couldn’t be more thrilled with my purchase. It has its minor flaws, some dings and rattles, and yet. It’s by far the coolest car I’ve ever owned. The quickest too, and the most exhilarating.
What I learned is dreams are ephemeral, malleable things. This car looks nothing like the car I thought I’d end up in, but the fundamentals are the same. It’s turbo, it makes PSHHHHH sounds, and it goes hard. That’s what I was really looking for, it just came wearing a different badge.
It’s so special, I actually barely drove it for the first week I had it. I had this superstition that if I dared to enjoy the car, I’d break it. That would be my punishment for daring to think I could have nice things.
When I finally dared to drop that top and head out on the open road, I laughed like a mad schoolgirl. No longer would I ride passenger in my friend’s Nissans, dreaming of what I couldn’t have. This Audi was fast, and fierce, and mine. And I look fucking gorgeous in it.
Any accountant would have told me this was a bad financial decision. But any life coach would tell me that it’s important to go after what you want in life. My girlfriend said the same, and she’s fucking wonderful.
I finally have my dream car—and I couldn’t be happier. Stay milky.
Image credits: Lewin Day
Congrats on the new dream! The cost of a decent S13 these days is ridiculous. I picked mine up for $1000 running, and only paid the guy the full asking price if he included the full manual swap he mentioned having (since it was an auto). I dailyed it for a year or more, having various issues along the way. Blew the stock engine completely and stopped driving it. Been a few years, but I’m hoping this is the year she comes back to life. I have a rebuilt KA in it, Silvia front end on it (Sil80s FTW!), and a few other bits and bobs to throw at it. Of all the cars I’ve owned or driven, there is just something about sitting in that drivers seat that nothing else really matches.
I also recently saw an ad for an infiniti M30. I haven’t seen one since my niece totaled mine years ago. I hadn’t realized I still lust after them and really want to buy the one I saw. That was a bit of an eye opener like your experience with the TT.
It’s rad you got one! And you’re so right.
When I was really young, my mate sold his turbo manual 180SX with the SR20 for $2,500.
I had $50 in my account and a Falcon that was worth MAYBE that much.
By the time I had real money, S13s were all over $20K.
More of coupe fan of the 1st gen TT, myself, but it’s a beauty in any configuration. In the hands of a fan, such as you, I predict it will prosper and continue to please. Happy motoring!
Very fair. Tbh, I would LOVE a coupe version as a track car. I’m so into this drivetrain.
I agree, the coupe would be a great track car. Never entered into track racing, myself, but I did rally a classic Austin Mini for a few years in college. Also delivered pizzas with the same car.
It’s funny, I normally prefer the roadster versions of sports cars (and I do very much like the TT roadster), but with the original TT and the BMW Z3 it’s the coupe model that works best for me. And they are contemporaries, too.
BTW, I think you win the title for the Autopian with the most responses to your readers on a daily basis. Appreciate the time and personal touch.
There’s an outpouring of joy, of wistfulness, of the sweet and bittersweet that comes out when we talk about cars. It’s funny how on this site about cars, we talk so much about friends and lovers, the ones that got away and the ones we managed to keep, family – whether in the context of heirlooms, or the freedom from them. The jobs that let us buy the cars, or kept us from them, or whose principal value was in a backroad commute.
It’s so much richer than it strictly needs to be, and I am grateful for it. Congratulations, Lewin.
You’re absolutely right, that’s what it’s all about.
That’s what I love about writing here—I knew this was a place where I could tell the full story, not just blurt out the spec sheet.
Thank you!
“The seats need retrimming. I’m tempted to farm this out. But what color—red, purple, tan, grey?”
Go for purple, live it up even more, especially since the exterior color is just grayscale 🙂
As for the HVAC issues, presumably you’ve already seen these but if not here’s a couple of good videos from The Humble Mechanic:
https://youtu.be/aiB_g4XNbHI?si=5tP3UxU9AuT703xb and
https://youtu.be/GR6DYOJ3B34?si=vYBZVh0BvckCuLYv
My girlfriend agreed and literally showed me your comment and said “SEE! I’m right!”
Thanks for the link, I’ll watch those!
Lol. Yeah, GMTA 🙂
You’re welcome, hope the videos are helpful!
Knew it was a TT from the thumbnail! I was driven around in the back of one of those (a coupe) as a kid to get to and from swim practice by a friends dad. I just remember him rowing gears and the turbo noises audible with each pull
Ayy, well done!
Don’t beat yourself up too much. You’ve had some nice cars, and now you have an absolutely wonderful one. Enjoy!
Haha, good advice!
My dad bought a used 2001 Audi TT coupe, 225 horsepower with Quattro and 6-speed manual, when I was a kid. It was a ridiculously fun car and stock, has seen more than 140 mph on the highway. I drove it a few times. Very hoonable, but neither reliable or cheap to operate.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!
I can’t speak for Australia since I live in the US, but after my college was mostly paid for with scholarships, I still graduated with crippling student loan debt, and spent a decade living in the ghetto on the bare minimum to pay it off. I managed to avoid default through 3 layoffs, each one that always ate away my hard-won savings I intended for my electric car project. No, not even a “good” job got me out of the hood, unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life in debt. There was even a period where the economy was supposedly “booming” but my engineering degree and at the time 9 years of engineering experience couldn’t get me new work no matter how hard I looked and I was washing dishes at a restaurant for minimum wage, commuting in a home-built electric velomobile. Only in the last 3 years did I finally start making and putting aside real money, and as a bonus, I have a dirt cheap living arrangement because I never got into the habit of inflating my lifestyle as my income rose, out of necessity. Most of my peers are going to be in debt and probably working until they’re dead, because they just had to have that slice of middle class pie in their 20s, but it’s all debt and the bank owns it, not them, and with kids, they’re now trapped in that lifestyle.
I have something very close to my dream car. I obtained a Triumph GT6 as a teenager and was intent on converting it to electric so I could try to get into the EV industry, before Tesla even existed. It’s why I went into engineering. That never panned out, money being the main bottleneck, and when I finally had a little money, I had no time to work on it because I worked a job 3 states away. I did get it running as an EV in 2012, first tested on some old golf cart batteries ready for the scrap heap. In 2004 when I got the car, I was too poor to scrape up $1,000 to do a budget EV conversion, and missed many good opportunities for not being able to prove I could put an EV together. Now with half my life gone, I just need to finish it, and these days, it probably won’t lead to my dream job as it could have back then. I probably got another 200-300 hours of work to put into it before it is actually road legal. I’ve driven it with the CALB LiFePO4 batteries a few times since and it is much faster than stock.
I helped my brother restore a GT6 back in the early/mid 90s. Such a fun car. An electric one would be awesome.
Hey, I get it, it’s tough out there.
I hope your project succeeds. Definitely keep me posted at lewin@theautopian.com.
If I’d have born born into upper-middle-class priviledge, things would have been very easy. I’d probably have gone far given what I knew in my formative years. The EV revolution took off without my input, when it could have benefited from it. I instead work a boring office job in an unrelated field, but at least I’m finally being compensated well for it, unlike in the past. 5 more years of this crap and I can finally have something resembling a life and maybe retire independently wealthy. Maybe I’ll be able to contribute to EV development, which was my original goal. I have more than one custom scratch-built vehicle that has functioned in the real world, both of which were learning experiences. Then there’s the GT6.
Life can be quite a clusterfuck when you’re born much closer to the bottom than the top, and have a dysfunctional family to boot. Now most of that family is dead.
And I definitely plan to keep you posted. When I get the chance again, I’m going to finish that car. Most of the work is done, the car runs, but it just isn’t legal. That hasn’t stopped me from periodically driving it though!
I really liked this article. That TT brings back some memories, even if my dad didn’t have it for very long. I knew it was a stupid decision when he bought it at lik 12% interest, and tried to warn him. He had it for only 2 years. If I could track down that same car today, I think it would make an interesting aero-modded EV. AWD with a transmission and transfer case that can handle 500+ lb-ft is a nice combination.
An Audi TT just like yours (except a coupe) is my 16 year old son’s dream car. He’s just about to get his license and has a pretty clean low mileage 94 Accord from my Mom. I keep telling him he should always have a decent reliable daily driver and fun project car(s), like the TT, so he’s not wrenching at midnight in the rain so he can get to work the next day.
My first fun car when I got a real job was a 71 TR-6.
Glad you finally got yours, Lewin
Haha, yeah – gotta be able to get around!
Thank you, and I hope your son gets a sweet ride of his own!
“I was going to study to be an engineer because it seemed like I’d enjoy that line of work. Every adult in my life promised me that this would bring me wealth and riches the likes of which they’d never seen.”
Were those adults in your life homeless or something? Or university employees?
Maybe they hadn’t actually spoken to anyone working as an actual scientist or engineer in STEM since the mid 60’s.
I have no idea if its the same in Australia, but engineering is still a good ticket to upper middle class life in the US.
Assuming you don’t go into management or something, your earnings ceiling is low compared to some other careers, but the floor is quite high.
It REALLY depends on the field, how generous your employer is and the local cost of living. I don’t have as much experience in the E of the STEM umbrella but in my experience working as a scientist in SFBA startups the S stands for SUCKS, at least as far as compensation and being in demand.
Kids! Forget STEM, the real money is in FIRE.
It bothers me sometimes to know I spent 5 years in school to make less than construction workers with a few years experience haha trades are great these days
Engineers generally come out of school making at or above US median wages at 22 years old.
Again, if you stay in that role you likely won’t get the huge raises that some other white collar careers give you, but your skills are in demand and you won’t be in danger of starving.
Are they making at or above the median wage in the places those jobs are though? Higher wages don’t mean squat if they’re all going to the landlord.
Engineering is probably the white collar career tied least to expensive cities.
-Plenty of factories in smaller/cheaper towns
-Plenty of utilities in rural areas
-Plenty of mining/drilling/etc far from cities.
If you’re a lawyer, finance guy, doctor, business major/MBA etc, you’re going to make a lot more money in NYC, SF, Chicago, or some other in demand place. Engineers have a lot more options to make decent money.
Fair enough. Just don’t assume a degree is a “union card” as my professors used to.
You can really rake it in if you overhead consists of a truck and trailer and you are willing to live in the oil fields or wind farms of Bumfuck, USA
My overhead consists of renting my step mom’s basement, using the bare minimum utilities, cooking my own meals, and using a velomobile to get around(no insurance/registration/taxes/gasoline/ect). Make a middle class income, and live like I make $20k a year. Of course, I live in an area where people like to shoot each other and there’s hundreds of thousands of them concentrated in a relatively small area. Bumfuck, USA, sounds really nice to my sensibilities.
My boys are attending a local STEM high school now. What the heck is FIRE? We thought engineering was still a decent path for them. One specifically wants to study automotive engineering.
FIRE may be “Financial Independence, Retire Early”, learning to live well beneath your means so frugal savings enable an early frugal retirement.
I applaud people with self-discipline to steer clear of expensive consumerism lifestyles. But it seems generally incompatible with, say, love of old German cars.
FIRE is a great idea if you are making enough money to have savings. It seems like the reality for many people is that after living expenses and student loans, there isn’t any fat to cut. This sucks for the individual but it also fucks up the entire economy. Student loan forgiveness is intended to get legions of people who are stuck back into the consumer economy.
I think there are still ways to make good money in the field. The best way, I’d say, would be to get max grades and do whatever you can to get your ideal job out of college.
I’m probably gonna write about this one day.
Like, I had okay grades. I didn’t get into automotive engineering or testing or anything neat out of college. Instead, I got a manufacturing engineering job that was much less interesting.
I had a heck of a good time during university, but I didn’t realize how important grades would be for getting the best jobs.
That said, I found my path. I really enjoy my writing career and the creativity and freedom suits me very well.
Depends on where you are and the extent of your qualifications (as with all jobs). My friend lives and works as an engineer in Toronto making great money but the cost of living is so high he doesn’t net much at the end of the month. I make much less than him in the same field but live in a much cheaper area, it balances out
This is true of any career though, and engineering roles (apart from maybe software) tend to be less tied to major metros than other high-paying careers.
Which is ironic since software should be the least location dependent of them all, especially anything having to do with the internet.
I am in software at a large corporation and post-Covid most roles are remote or office, employee choice.
I’m not a software engineer, so my statement is based only on what I hear in the news, namely FAANG companies making everyone come back to the office. Glad to hear there’s some flexibility out there.
It’s a weird industry. But the very high profile companies like Meta, Amazon, Google, etc are all famous (among people in the field) for being dogshit places to work. It’s kinda sad how the general public thinks they represent the best of corporate stewardship.
My career has mostly been on the East Coast and I avoided the Silicon Valley culture entirely.
I’ve heard the same thing; they are a place to work early on and make some big money, but leave before you get burned out.
Honestly much like Wall Street in that respect.
You won’t get there anytime soon unless you meet the following criteria:
1) Parents are able to pay your pay through college
2) You know someone that can hook you up with a well-paying job right out of college
3) You never experience multiple layoffs throught the early portion of your career
I graduated at the start of the great so-called “recession”, and bounced around between having a lower middle class income f around $50-60k/year and having nothing and living off of savings. That student loan bill was due and anytime I managed to build up a healthy savings, it was always taken away surviving and avoiding default when another round of layoffs would commence.
In short, if you want to have middle class life as an engineer, and not be in debt the rest of your life to “afford” it, you better come from at least middle class privilege, AND never become unlucky at any point along the way.
I was responsible for myself and responsible with my money the entire way, and I’ve only recently actually entered the middle class from a lifestyle and financial viability standpoint(I could have pretended to be such early on using more debt, but…). But habits being what they are, I don’t live like it yet. I’d rather be able to retire in my 40s given how much of a long, unrewarded slog it was for the first 9 years or so. If I’d have done like some of my coworkers and took on relatively modest debt for a house in the suburbs and a nice car, I’d have lost it all multiple times over through no fault of my own, and I’ve seen some of those same coworkers lose everything and get into dire straights(try getting another good job after losing one when you can’t pass a credit check).
I’m glad I’m doing well now, but if I had to do it over again, I might have been able to achieve some of my goals early on if I’d have instead dropped out of high school and sold dope, under the condition that I never got caught. The problem of lacking a permission slip to work called a college degree may have then become the bottleneck, and not money.
I mean, my 401k would be looking pretty sweet right now if my chosen career was “bank robber, under the condition I’d never be caught”.
The purpose of all my posts in this thread are not that engineering is a solution for everyone, or that success is easy, but that given the typical choices of an intelligent 18 year old, an engineering career has perhaps the lowest downside risk. Namely:
-Salaries are stable, your skills are generally in demand. I was laid off/let go a couple times early in my career too, but with the exception of 2009-10 (a generational recession), I was never out of work long.
-Geographical flexibility. As I’ve mentioned in my earlier posts, you don’t need to live in NYC or Silicon Valley to make an upper 5/lower 6 figure income in engineering.
-High starting salaries. Starting at ~$70,000 these days is nothing to scoff at. It’s higher than pretty much any undergrad degree. You don’t need to know someone to hook you up with one of these jobs, unemployment is historically low and even lower for degree-holders.
-No grad school is generally necessary. You’re out of school in 4 years, with much lower debt than someone who needs an advanced degree for career success.
Among the ways to get a reliable 6-figure income without family connections, an engineering degree is pretty far towards the safer end.
The fact that engineering is one of the lowest-risk career paths says a lot about life in the USA, because every step of the way, I had no shortage of risk. It was not risk taken enthusiastically, but begrudgingly, when voluntarily taken at all. A lot of it was imposed by others. If you come from a prole background, you’re generally screwed no matter what you do!
I’m the exception that made it out, not the rule. It doesn’t help that my parents were stupid with their money, either. I learned from their mistakes and have become miserly as a result. When my father passed away, my family inherited nothing but funeral bills…
I hear a lot about the shortage of people with my skillset. Yet, during times of unemployment, I’d be sending out my resume and applying to multiple places a day, and getting so much as a phone interview was like a 1 in 250 chance. I only applied to jobs I was actually qualified for(and they were many), only to be regularly ignored. Did those jobs even exist? I wasn’t washing dishes for a year and a half at a shitty restaraunt for the fun of it; I had 9 years engineering experience at the time and couldn’t get anyone to hire me, and needed money to save my mother’s house from foreclosure. Some former coworkers and former fellow students of mine actually ended up homeless, with their engineering degrees. I remember when Boeing was hiring embedded system designers and someone I went to school with applied for that position. He heard nothing back, and some foreign applicants ended up getting that job for $9/hr, which discovered during an audit after there were repeated 737MAX plane crashes. He could have competently done that job, and was utterly ignored, while Boeing told the government they couldn’t find people with his skillset. I wonder how common that is around the U.S. given both his experiences and mine?
I think your story is a valuable lesson that nothing is guaranteed, that bad things can befall anyone, and that being prepared for the worst is an important skill.
I also do not think that the typical engineering graduate will experience so much hardship. That has certainly been true for me and the many engineers I have met and kept up with through school and work over the last 20 years. Most all of us have been living fairly normal middle-class lives since the recession ended around 2011-12.
Coming from some meaningful degree of wealth and having someone to fall back on vs being on your own really puts risk into perspective. A minor risk for one person could yield negative life-altering and permanent consequences for another, should it go wrong.
I’ve even been homeless before myself. I was homeless WITH money in the bank and a job whose 7th floor had a gym with a locker rom and shower, so that was a totally different world from being homeless and broke. And even then, I was camping out in bandos.
You definitely have to watch yourself with student loan debt, even going for a relatively safe degree. Had I chosen a different major, my life might really suck right now with no visible or viable path out.
I remember when I was desperate for a job and was going to try to use my velomobile to be a bicycle courier for not much above minimum wage on a part time basis. To get an idea of the competition: one of the applicants claimed he had a PhD in mathematics, so I quizzed him on various concepts in differential equations and calculus, and he knew them! I didn’t get offered that job. There were more than 20 people there that interviewed when I showed up, and I’m sure far more applicants. Supposedly, the economy at the time was booming gangbusters and unemployment where I was at was about 3%… I just don’t know how to reconcile that.
Things have improved somewhat in this regard, but I found out I was Type 1 diabetic during first-semester exam period my senior year of college, at a time when health insurance plans weren’t required to cover preexisting conditions even if you had a policy. That inhibited me from just taking off to follow my dream somewhere. not to mention that the places where I would have gone to do so were expensive (I shake my head when I read younger people pining for the early ’90s when it was cheap in San Francisco, because it was expensive enough to scare me off even then) and it didn’t help that I had (and have) a host of personal failings and a degree that was far less in demand than anything in engineering, and also lacked (and still mostly lack) the skills and confidence to make anything out of my alma mater’s positive name recognition. (I have learned to answer the “Why are you applying for this?” question quite well, though.) Living somewhere with a professional job market largely tied to defense contracting that I was never clearheaded enough to do more than think about leaving did little for professional development, even if in hindsight I don’t regret it because I was here for my grandmother and parents as they aged. And now, after almost a decade of a steady lower-middle class income that allowed me to buy a house before the pandemic drove prices way up, I’m out of work again (through no fault of my own, I’m assured) in an industry that’s having significant trouble right now and at an age when anyone with a modicum of success would be considering retirement.
The point being is that even doing everything right these days (college major in a high-demand field, no prolonged layoffs or at-fault terminations, living in a location with a large number of available jobs and/or the ability to move easily) makes things no better than tenuous in the US, and any added complications (illness, family obligations) or, worse, mistakes are enough to pretty much sink things. And as life winds on, there’s less and less room for recovery.
Sorry about that, and congratulations on the dream car, Lewin. Even if things don’t entirely work out, it’s better to chase your dream to find it wanting or out of reach than to not chase it and still have everything end up fucked.
Gotta roll with what comes your way, for sure. Thank you!
I’m curious what kind of engineer field you’d recommend. My oldest son just had a completely lonely and boring Purdue experience as a freshman this past year. He passed with decent grades but met nobody and classes were uninspiring. He was hoping to do Aerospace Engineering but is now likely transferring to some other school and going into Mechanical Engineering. Our other son wants to study Automotive Engineering. Hence my inquiry.
My degree/only experience is in Mechanical Engineering, so I can speak best to that. The nice thing is that an ME degree is generalist, and you can often get into your preferred career with it anyways. Or if you change your mind mid-career, you’ll have more options than if you have an Aero Eng or Auto Eng or some other more specialized degree.
I went to a smaller school, with smaller class sizes and many of the same students in all my classes. I would definitely recommend this if he found Purdue impersonal and lonely.
Within ME, there will be lots of elective courses to specialize in. One of the biggest breaks will be between manufacturing and design. So if your sons have a preference between those two, they can focus some electives on the track their prefer (they will still have courses in both). A few years ago I might have counselled going into design, but now I would say both paths are quite viable. Lot of new manufacturing activity going on in the US, and lots of engineering positions available. I’m not active on Linkedin and I’m not even an engineer anymore, but I still get calls from recruiters almost every week asking me about some manufacturing role.
I would advise your sons to consider getting a PE certification as well. It involves a test near college graduation and some supervision early in your career. I let it lapse and regret it. Not every role requires it, but it can only help and isn’t a lot of extra work.
Good luck to your sons! There are a lot of engineers who comment on this site, so hopefully some more people can weigh in as well.
Another option is train engineer. No college. 6 figure salary. Pension. Guaranteed (almost always) raises every year. Outstanding job security.
It’s a bit rough the first few years, but seniority does wonders.
I was in a class of 100 aerospace engineers.
We designed a plane on paper in our final year.
“Congratulations to all of you for designing your first plane. For all but two of you, this will be the last plane you’ll ever design.”
In Australia there are very few aerospace jobs, but lots of people took the degree because it sounded better than mechanical engineering.
They ended up renaming the degree “Mechanical and Aerospace” to give grads better job prospects when most of them failed to get into aero work.
I started out in ME myself, but the weed-out classes took their toll. Ended up graduating in Art and Design. Interestingly enough, I’m currently working in the field of visualization, supporting engineers of various disciplines.
To echo V10omous, ME is still a great way to go, especially if one can pick up a master’s degree and/or their PE. The guys I work for do quite well. Getting there definitely takes work, but the flexibility and skill-demand are nice features later on.
Civil Engineering is another area of study where it’s possible to make bank. It may not be automotive, but hey, it’s what most autos need. Two of my friends, including my dorm roommate went into this field and are making six figures in their 40’s.
One more overlooked area to keep an eye on, even after just a few years in the industry, is consulting. Especially if one can find a spot doing that within the wide world of litigation. The stress can be a bit much, but the $$$’s can make up for it – I know a few engineers in our company who make bonuses more than my salary.
I tell my teenage daughter that in engineering people make decent money but not so many make huge money. In finance, as a counter-example, a few make huge money but many make less than an experienced engineer.
I do think that just throwing out “engineering” is way too broad tho. Maybe Toecutter’s issues (aside from what appears to be a terrible case of bad luck) stem (heh) from his field of choice. I graduated into a recession with an EE degree. My first job was real electrical engineering. Later, my dad met someone whose husband was looking for an early career electrical engineer. At job 2, I was exposed to software development and discovered I enjoyed it and had a decent aptitude for it so that’s what I’ve done ever since.
So true. I had a friend who got a great job in software engineering.
Most of his fellow graduate engineers came from middle class life. Their parents gave them house deposits, so as soon as they started their grown up jobs, they bought houses.
He came from more modest means, and couldn’t do the same. He nearly had to borrow money to cover his rent while he was waiting for his first paycheck to come in.
Three years later he’d saved some good money. But they’d all bought houses that had appreciated 25% or more and they all now had million dollar assets. They were miles ahead because of a small cash boost they’d had at the beginning.
Man, to think of what it would have been like to have been given a house early on? I knew people that were given brand new Corvettes and Porsche Boxsters as high school graduation presents.
I used to pay attention to cold weather power outages as opportunities to dumpster dive for food. I’d load up the Suzuki Sidekick my step mom let me use, and haul $200+ in groceries back with the winter weather having acted as a giant refrigerator as everything sat in the dumpster all day.
My dream house at this point is an off-grid shack on 20+ acres of land with a workshop out back. Screw a half-million dollar overpriced dwelling space.
You gotta keep in mind these conversations were happening 20 years ago. And you’re right, they hadn’t spoken to anyone in that line of work. They just had the common misconception from a generation ago that a degree meant you’d be rich.
You gotta keep in mind these conversations were happening 20 years ago
So was the one I had with a professor who told me a Ph.D. was a “union card”.
The reality? Not whatsoever.
Thank you Lewin and the other commenters for the advice and great Autopian guidance. What a great community. I’m happy to be a member.
Awesome article, really enjoy your stuff Lewin. As someone who only recently got into VAG stuff in the last two years, I wholeheartedly condone TT ownership. Congrats! Audiworld and Audizine are great resources for all things Audi. Forums are hanging on by a thread, but still alive, and all of the idiots have moved on to Facebook groups, so they’re pretty civil. Tunes are typically tied to the VIN, so the best way to find out if it is tuned is to call/email the big tuners for that platform and simply ask if they have that VIN in their database.
Good tip! Thanks!
Cool. Glad you got what you wanted!
That being said, please don’t write another article in this style/format. You buried the lede deeper than a Jalopnik slideshow or a USA Today listicle on best toothbrushes for your pet parakeet.
But did you enjoy yourself!
I saw the oddly bulbous shape of the blacked-out silhouette and thought, “TT convertible.” Then there followed a slew of cars that weren’t TTs.
Ah, finally. I’m glad to know I can still identify stuff.
For what it’s worth, I’d have kept that Miata and driven it until the wheels fell off.
I did put about 50,000 km on that thing—odo read 412,000 km by the time I was done with it!
Glad you finally got something you love, and the TT is such a classic bauhaus inspired design that has aged nicely. My “dream car” was my second car for me – a ’93 BMW 325is. Saw it on Craigslist late at night back in about 2004, called the seller at 7am the next morning and basically said “I’d like to come take a look and probably will buy it”. Had it for almost 8yrs, and only sold it because I had a long commute at the time and expensive things were going wrong, leaving it in the shop more than on the road. From then on, I always made it a priority to have a car I enjoy- life’s too short to drive something you hate!
Follow those dreams. I’ve had a similar bunch go through the garage – turbo brick, MX-5, Beemer, diesel benz, 5 valve VAG. But what made me pause was how our stories diverge. I worked through university, money troubles made it 8 years for a 4 year piece of paper. But for me the engineering degree was the key to happiness – good salary in my market and being in the room where it happens rather than in the basement grunting. Perhaps I am the old man making the new engineers miserable…
YMMV.
I’m glad you found the role that worked for you!
I did have one very cool engineering job, but it only lasted a few months before COVID saw me laid off.
Ultimately it wasn’t the path for me, but others find their home there!
Howdy Lewin! I’m so happy you’ve discovered the joy of the TT. I still need to replace my old one because the first-gen TT has been a dream car for me since I was a kid.
One problem you’ll almost certainly run into is the failure of the instrument cluster. The display may go dark, the tach may start going all over the place, the fuel gauge may become stuck on full, and the temp needle will make it seem like the car is overheating.
Replacing the cluster will fix that, but a temporary workaround is the “49c trick,” a button trick which allows the HVAC display to show various parameters, including coolant temp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCAPW_wOqfk
Here I thought the 49c trick was when you use a roll of pennies as a fuse
No, that’s the 50c trick. 🙂
I drove crappy 80s Subarus for years. During that time, the WRX hit our shores, but it cost 3/4 of what I paid for my house. As a single dad, I could only dream of owning one. Almost 2 decades later, while bitching that I couldn’t find a manual car on CL for $3k worth having, my buddy offered me an early bugeye he had just bought—but kept speeding in (we’re in Virginia, and he has a CDL).
I didn’t lift the hood or look under it. He had bought it & that was good enough for me. I, too, giggled with delight at the boost, and shook hands after a test-drive in which I barely hit 3rd gear. It’s been over 4 years now, and the only regret I have is that we haven’t had snow in 2. Life is short: go on and drive your dream.
You can save yourself a lot of money if you put new seat covers on yourself. You can order them from Katskin leather (prolly the baseball ones) and install them yourself. It’s really not that hard, remove the seats and the covers just slip on the bottom and back (after removing the old ones lol).
Waiting for this comment. Seats are really easy to deal with. And well worth the expense and effort.
How do I do this without popping the seat airbags?
unhook the 12v from the battery and disconnect the cable from the seat then remove, easy peasy!
I did this to my veloster when I installed heated seats!
This is awesome. It’s why we buy these silly things, and sweat blood into them, curse, and fight until it’s right again. The feeling of taking on a road with something you feel in tune with is worth all the work. Congratulations!
Sorry for the double post, but you reminded me of my first time driving a new “cool” car. A friend and I were standing in front of our high school and another kid’s dad pulled up in a shiny, red, new Audi TT, which had just debuted that year. I jokingly asked the guy if I could drive it, and he said “can you drive stick?” I said I could, and he literally tossed me the keys and went inside. After getting over the shock, my friend and I got in and I took it for a few laps around the parking lot. Nothing crazy, but I was able to get into a bit of boost in 1st gear and it made me giggle just like you said. Thanks for bringing up that memory, it was a good one.
That’s so cool, what a rad guy!?
It’s nice to see someone enamored with a 225 TT! I had one for a few years and absolutely loved it – when it ran right. In the end there were just too many seemingly little issues that took special tools or cost more than expected. Sold it to a friend and decided I won’t ever own a German car again. The memories when it worked right though? Priceless.
Growing up I wanted a ’66 GTO tri-power, but as a high school kid working at Pep Boys on the weekends there was no way I could afford one. I ended up buying a worn-out ’66 Pontiac Ventura which looked like a giant GTO (this was around 1998 for reference). Over the years I replaced nearly everything on that car, pulled the engine and transmission twice to be rebuilt, drove it every day in Texas and Georgia with no air conditioning, through college, and to my first “real” job.
I was in college when Pontiac announced the new GTO, and when I first saw the commercial I decided I was going to have one. After graduating, getting a decent job, and getting married, I found a 2005 manual blue on blue with the SAP package for sale in a neighboring state for a decent price with less than 10k miles. I asked the wife and she said go for it, and a couple days later I was driving it home late at night, completely in love with it.
Cut to 17 years later and 160,000 miles, I still have the car and it still feels special. Once again I’ve been through just about every inch of it, dropped the transmission twice, full bolt-ons, replaced every suspension bushing with poly, multiple exhaust setups, drag racing, track days, autocross, almost getting arrested. It’s been my source of adventures for my entire adult life and even though it’s getting up in years and miles I don’t think I could ever part with it.
That’s legendary. Glad you found a car that made your life special!
Were the baseball stitch seats a thing in the Australian market? I’d be looking for those rather than an upholsterer. One of the coolest features you could get in a TT.
And good for you. I’ve done the “I’ll get a cool car after this….” and successfully not obtained a cool car for almost two decades now. Now my brain is too hardwired to avoid expensive repairs and unreliable rides.
THIS!! So much this!!
Those baseball stitch seats are probably the best thing about the first gen TT.
I agree completely, and I hate baseball.
What are baseball stitch seats?
Couple pictures in case the links don’t work:
http://images.gtcarlot.com/pictures/70316876.jpg
https://imgur.com/lN2nZ8T
They came on the second gen TT as well.
Nice to see folks’ dreams come true. Hope it works out for you.
I have a longtime friend – almost a girlfriend, for a time, not that it matters – when these were new, and she was very enamored with them. I just saw them as a VW New Beetle with a slightly less-bubbly shape (more like the classic “bathtub” cars of old, but modernized?), which itself was just a Golf/Jetta in a less-practical shape. Then the news broke about how they could lose control if they didn’t have the spoiler and she was so upset because she felt the spoiler ruined the look.
So a spoiler spoiled it for her? How ironic.
I thought the holy grail Audi TT was the 2.5TFSI 5-Cylinder Turbo?
Honestly, I hope the VW gods are good to you – there’s so much that can cost you with an old VW that only gets worse when it has an Audi badge on it.
I think that’s a later generation maybe? The holy grail first gen I’m aware of is the 3.2 V6, but some say it’s too nose heavy.
Crockett & Tubbs, Aussie style. In a Daihatsu. And Crockett with his “Ferrari” a white MX-5.