VIN and deferred maintenance

[LEEJ07A@prodigy.com (MS LORI K SCHNEIDER)]

Hi all,

Many thanks to everyone of you who responded to my request for a VIN 
translation on my 83 TQC.
I will sleep better tonight knowing I bought what I thought I bought.

And if you were wondering how the heck I racked up $1,300 in deferred 
maintenance, well . . .

My husband and I have come to expect this, having bought 20-some used 
cars (all but three were German) over the past ten years.  While I 
have no doubt I could figure out whether/how to fix some things on my 
own,  I have so little time that it is usually easier to just take it 
to a dealer and say "find everything and fix it."  In this case the 
dealer is Vasek Polak, who is legendary in so Cal Porsche circles.  I 
knew there were some problems, which I pointed out to the service 
writer.  They found others.  In round numbers:

cruise control inoperable --  100+ to diagnose, 275 to fix
rear brake pads -- 145
rear trunk shocks -- 185
rough cold start and idle -- oxygen sensor, vacuum leak, fuel 
injection system flush -- 130 to diagnose, 200-something to fix
poor to non-existent dash lighting -- 200-something including 
diagnosis, parts and labor

etc
etc

I don't have the bill in front of me right now but you get the idea.

The good new is, things that didn't work, NOW WORK, and better still, 
performance that was wonderful is now INCREDIBLE!

Only a couple of things bothered me about the whole experience, 
namely:
- the service writer was a tad arrogant and questioned why this 40 
year old female would WANT such an odd car -- until I dropped a few 
comments about some of the other rare and wonderful cars I have 
owned
- labor charges for diagnosis seemed a bit high -- come on, how tough 
is it to confirm that crusise control doesn't work?

Anyway after I finally got my car back today (after my husband 
negotiated for a 10% PCA discount on the grounds that we would refer 
our Porsche friends), the service writer agreed with my assessment 
that I did indeed have a rare and wonderful car, and even 
acknowledged that "Mr. Polak himself owns one."  Well I figure if 
this odd car is good enough for Vasek, it's good enough for me!

Lori