Dan and I (and the dogs) went to Toronto this past weekend. The craziness started with the Canadian border guard who didn’t seem to know what a temporary tag was and thought we were driving an unlicensed car. Then a few miles down the road this kid in the back seat of a Lexus SUV had his window rolled down and was pointing and smiling at our car (guess he knew what it was).
But the funniest thing was taking it to the local dealer – Yorkdale VW. When we were there over Christmas we saw a black, low-profile roof rack on a GTI which looked a lot better than the standard, chunky thing that VW sells. The dealer here in the US didn’t know how to get one so I figured the VW dealer in Toronto could get one…
So I get this guy in the parts department who tries to help me, but he’s junior and looking at all the wrong pages in the catalogs. So he goes and gets help from the more senior guy who’s on the phone. He asks what type of car I have and I say an ’08 R32. “You have a 2008 R32 here?”, “Yeah…” I say… “I’m creaming my pants right now…” he responds…
He comes out to the car to take a look, and while we’re walking through the shop he tells a couple guys there’s an ’08 R32 outside… When we get out there there’s already someone looking at the car (probably a sales guy or manager). The parts guy and I take a quick look at the car and then head back inside. We look through the computer to see if we can find the low profile roof rack, but can’t find one – even for an ’07 GTI.
On my way back out to the car I see a bunch of guys looking at it. The manager says, “I could make a $100 if you stayed here another 15 minutes – just in charging the guys to look at the car.” Later I think it’s more like he’s losing a $100 since they’re not working…
I get out the car and there’s at least 8 guys standing around looking at it. One of them asks me to pop the hood, I do… They ask how much horsepower it has – one guy thought it had 280 – I say 250. They talk about how VW could fit a 3.6 liter engine in there and make an incredibly fast car. I didn’t correct them (the 3.6 liter won’t fit in there). The funny part was how respectful of the car they were – it was like they were afraid to touch it. I wouldn’t have cared – I even left it unlocked when I went back in with the parts guy figuring some of them would want to look inside, but no one did…
I barely had enough time to get home and change for Dan’s grandmother’s funeral, so I excused myself, closed the hood and left… Too bad I didn’t have more time. I really wanted to get some of their dealer plates and a pic of it in front of their showroom so I could do fake “look, you can get R32s in Canada” post… But I didn’t have the time…