You'll love this one. Pulling into my garage one night I shut off the motor and waited for my fans to turn off. My ABS warning was on. Then I noticed a motor noise going on under the hood (remember, the engine is not running). I lifted the hood and detected that some sort of motor was churning away. I thought 'What in the world is that?" So I called the Autobarn in Evanston and they said to bring it in. I proceeded to do so, noticing that my brakes felt very strange, that the humming motor noise increased as I drove, but went off whenever I hit the brakes. So, I made it safely to the Autobarn. I pulled into the service area and a service guy came over and asked me what was wrong. I shut off the engine and lifted the hood and indicated this motor that was running (I guess it was the ABS motor). I touched it and said he had never seen anything like that before. I also pointed out that the ABS warning light was on and my brakes were acting up. He proceeded to write up and estimate indicating that the ABS motor was running and the light was on. I then handed him the keys and went on my merry way. The next morning I received a call from the Autobarn's service manager. He told me that a couple hours after I had left (I got there at around 5:30 pm) that my car had caught fire while sitting out on the lot and that they had called the fire department who had put it out. They said it was an electrical fire.

My car, my beautiful tricked -out black, fully loaded, kickin' sound system, GLX, was a total loss. I still can't bring myself to look at it. I'm thinking that the service guy drove the car out back and parked it there and turned off the engine but forgot to undo the battery or the ABS fuse so that the ABS motor would stop running. It continued running and started a fire.

Does anyone have any advice for me? Autobarn says they are not responsible because they hadn't worked on the car. We are thinking of going to VW HQ next.