DEATHMATCH: Passat doors vs. freezing rain

A couple weeks ago when we had a round of freezing rain, I wasted much of an evening trying to get my car door closed (I got it open just fine, but the latch got stuck). I tried futzing around with the lock for hours with a coat hanger, no luck. Tried slamming it repeatedly to unjam the mechanism, no luck.

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        <p>Finally I just went outside, Game Boy in hand for meanwhile amusement, sat in the car, fired up the engine, kicked the defroster on full blast at full heat, and let it sit and bake. After about 20 minutes (total guess, this was a couple weeks ago and I wasn&#8217;t timing it) of Tetris, I heard the mechanism click and voil&agrave;, the door latched shut again.</p>

In the process, I googled to see if others had had the same problem, and found this thread via Google Groups—apparently the locking mechanism in the Passat has this issue :/ Looking around now, I also see this link to a more permanent (and more hackish) fix.

Outside of the door issue though, the Passat is running great. So nice to be driving a manual again. *So* nice.