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Comment by swang | Hacker News Reader

I love the look/feel/drive of a VW, but I will never again own one.

My parents bought a 2002 VW which I mostly drove and the maintenance costs were through the roof. There have been at least 3-4 recall notices, one time while parked on an incline, it rained and flooded the back of the car with water. When I went to VW, they said that I had to manually clean out some drainage underneath the car. How the hell am I going to do that?

Then the coolant leaks, engine belts, cracked radiator. You name it I probably had to get it fixed.

Never again.

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Interesting, since here in EU the VAG group cars (Seat, Škoda, VW, Audi) are widely perceived as the most reliable and there's a huge amount of people buying nothing else.

Perhaps it's where they are built. I assume most US-bound VWs are from Mexico or US proper due to NAFTA and auto-import regulations.

My 2011 Jetta was built in Hamburg, according to the VIN plate.

I had a 2009 Wolfsburg Jetta 2.0t, assembled in Mexico I believe, that was a complete maintenance nightmare. I got out of it before the timing belt needed to be replaced and purchased a Toyota instead.

Yes, VWs made outside of Germany are basically junk.

As was my German-built Corrado in the 90s. Of course, is that stopping me from buying another one this year? Nope, it just took me 15 years ago to get over it.

This was true for much of the 2000s, but the new platform used from ~2009 onwards (the one implicated here) has been perfectly fine. The 2009-2016 Golfs get consistent Very Good/Good reliability ratings from Consumer Reports.

They're still not Honda, but they're now better than average.

VW have a much better reputation than Honda in Europe.

The most common complaint is that repairs for German cars are much more expensive, but this may be an artifact of the supply chain for parts and not apply to Europe.

Individual anecdotes don't mean much. You can find objective data on car reliability on TrueDelta and Long-Term Quality Index. Those aren't true random samples but still pretty useful.

http://www.truedelta.com/car-reliability

http://tradeinqualityindex.com/reports/Volkswagen.html

_My_ story is anecdotal but early 2000 VWs are known for being really shitty. this have this history. I heard they have gotten "better" but a bit too late for me to care about.

I had a 2001 Passat 1.8T (that I got used in 2003) had a slew of problem covered under the VW CPO warranty. Fortuitously enough, after that warranty expired, it ran like a clock for 8 years. (But I wasn't afraid to service it myself either.

On the newer ones the high pressure fuel pump disintegrates and poops metal bits into the engine, requiring the engine to be replaced. That's why VW recently extended the warranty against the HPFP to, if I recall correctly, 100k miles.

Here's the 400-page-long forum thread on that defect: http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=308323

Note that the pump in question has been redesigned multiple times by Bosch. Hardware bugs are a thing, even in cars.

Maybe the bug is that the engine requires ludicrous fuel pressure to achieve its claimed performance.

IIRC, 2002 was around a local minimum in VW reliability.

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