Please tell us more!
Eight years later, after zero accidents and zero breakdowns, it was needing thousands of dollars in "routine" maintenance done. CR's reliability rating had sunk into the abyss. The mechanics at 6 different dealerships and repair shops assured me that I did not have a lemon, and my problems were "perfectly normal" for VW's like mine. However lovely to drive (and, yes, it was), it was engineered with no thoughts for maintainability, nor the ongoing cost of that. The exhaust manifold coked up regularly, requiring replacements. It could take a skilled VW mechanic half an hour to change a burned-out headlight bulb. (I'd given up myself after a couple hours fiddling - concluding that you needed either just the right custom tool, or a well-trained pet octopus.) Another shop's mechanic told me that later VW models required removal of the whole front bumper assembly to change a headlight bulb.
Never again.
I'll admit they are somewhat of an odd duck- most of the problems are caused by regular mechanics not understanding them -problems a hobbyist or enthusiast would avoid by learning from others. The required maintenance is simpler and cheaper than most any other car- just different...
For example, your issues with the "exhaust manifold coked up" - I am nearly certain you are actually talking about the intake manifold, an issue that is 100% eliminated by tuning the EGR and injection system properly. Morover, it only takes a few minutes of work to pull it off and clean it out in the garage, no replacement needed.
I love these cars so much that I convinced a few non-mechanically minded friends and family to buy them, and they were unmitigated disasters for them. Almost entirely from either skipping essential regularly scheduled maintenance, or taking it to incompetent mechanics that did the maintenance incorrectly.
That timing belt replacement was well-known and widely advertised. The coking of the manifold (effectively strangulating the engine) was NOT. Ditto the car's growing appetite for various one-off repairs, some of them very pricey.
Yes, I'd probably view things quite differently if I'd had the tools & time to do my own repairs at the "remove manifold from the engine, clean, replace" level. And wanted to adjust my ERG to non-factory (and plausibly non-legal) spec's. And etc. And I'm sure that owning a horse is great, if you love horses, and don't mind caring for horses daily, and have a horse barn and feed budget and good veterinarian and etc.
By compare, the Honda that I bought to replace the VW (from the same dealer), has been a different world. 14-ish years old now, and repairs vastly fewer and nicely cheaper.
All of that is basic European/German car ownership... it's definitely not for everyone. But to me, these cars are a lot of fun to drive, and tinkering on them is a fun hobby. To me, the driving experience on any of the low maintenance Japanese cars isn't even in the same ballpark, but not everyone notices or cares about that.
I drive a TDI Touareg right now and it is 10x the cost/hassle of those ALH TDIs... it is funny hearing your perspective about the ALH being too much hassle.
I don't think it's illegal to turn down the EGR- I'm not talking about turning it off. The system still reports its settings and passes emissions tests. I think the clogging rate is accelerated by driving them too gently... mine wasn't that clogged yet when I took it off to check at 150k miles, with the stock EGR settings.
Not singling you out in particular, but these cars are so well made and hold up so well, that lots of people seem to complain that they need start to need a few $k of work at 150-200k miles when most other cars would be headed to the crusher.