Motoring Discussion > Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report Miscellaneous
Thread Author: Videodoctor Replies: 17
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 11:22 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - Videodoctor
A news article on the other side makes interesting reading about the reliability of Volkswagens.

www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/miscellaneous/2013-06/volkswagen-reliability-shock-in-australia/
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 12:52 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - mikeyb
A friend of mine has a bluemotion golf as a company car, and has had more warranty work than I would have expected in the 3 years hes had it. It has done 90K, but knowing him it will have led a gentle well looked after life.

Hes now buying it from the lease company for his wife (not sure if thats wise IMO) so I hope it lasts him well.

He is getting an Audi A3 in replacement
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 13:54 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - Fursty Ferret
>>
>> He is getting an Audi A3 in replacement
>>

So, basically another Volkswagen. And you all laughed about my Insignia. :-)

I suspect the bigger problem is a decline in German build quality, which frankly was never great to begin with.
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 14:24 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - DP
I think a lot of modern cars have reliability problems. Full of expensive tech that has been developed and manufactured at the lowest possible cost.
Last edited by: DP on Sun 9 Jun 13 at 14:24
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 14:46 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - Skip

>>
>> I suspect the bigger problem is a decline in German build quality, which frankly was
>> never great to begin with.

FF you are so right there. However their marketing departments must be good at their jobs as people still buy German brands thinking that they are getting a product that is better quality than non German makes.
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 15:11 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - DP
Another forum I frequent has threads discussing £2k bills for clutch and transmission ECU faults on 5 yr old, 40 and 50,000 mile Toyotas.

It isn't as simple as singling out German manufacturers or VW in particular. It's cars being filled with technology which is untested, unproven, and provided by the lowest bidder. It's a general problem.

I haven't seen figures, but my suspicion is that reliability peaked in the early 90s, when EFI was commonplace for decent, consistent running, but the rest of the highly strung, often heath robinson claptrap had yet to be invented.

Vauxhall would sell you a 2.0 injection Cavalier in 1990 that would do 60 in under 9 seconds, 130 mph, 35 mpg, and a near guaranteed 200,000 miles without anything going wrong with it.
Last edited by: DP on Sun 9 Jun 13 at 15:12
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 15:24 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - Bill Payer
>> Vauxhall would sell you a 2.0 injection Cavalier in 1990 that would do 60 in
>> under 9 seconds, 130 mph, 35 mpg, and a near guaranteed 200,000 miles without anything
>> going wrong with it.
>>

Hmmm...we had Cavaliers as company cars around that time. Being left in lane 3 of the M62 after the cambelt snapped really wasn't funny. Went 3 times on one I had. We had two with intermittant faults where the car would just cut out but once stopped would restart and fun fine.
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 15:33 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - DP
>> Hmmm...we had Cavaliers as company cars around that time. Being left in lane 3 of
>> the M62 after the cambelt snapped really wasn't funny. Went 3 times on one I
>> had. We had two with intermittant faults where the car would just cut out but
>> once stopped would restart and fun fine.

I never heard of an unreliable Cavalier. We had various ones as pool cars with starship mileages that had been bought off the lease company at 3yrs old, and simply driven into the ground without servicing or anything other than bare essential repairs. They usually looked rough as biscuits, but always drove well, and never seemed to go wrong.

I still remember a friend's dad getting one as a company car in 1991. He bought it off the company at 3yrs old with 120k on it, where it became their second car. My friend inherited it when he was 19, and we abused that thing terribly for a couple of years as "yoof" did at the time. It was finally written off by an artic in 2001, with 225k on it. Never let anyone down at any time.

Electric windows, power steering, EFI run by one relatively simple ECU, and that was your lot. Nothing else on the thing to go wrong.
Last edited by: DP on Sun 9 Jun 13 at 15:34
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 Mon 10 Jun 13 01:11 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - VxFan
>> I never heard of an unreliable Cavalier.

The 8v engines were pretty much bullet proof. Then came along the 16v engine and that's when the problems started.
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 15:31 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - Auristocrat
"Another forum I frequent has threads discussing £2k bills for clutch and transmission ECU faults on 5 yr old, 40 and 50,000 mile Toyotas."

Probably the Toyota Multi Mode transmissions which were manual gearboxes with electronically controlled clutches. Several of these automated manual gearboxes are expensive to repair when a few years old and they go wrong - Toyota MMT, Vauxhall Easytronic, Fiat Dualogic, Mazda ASM, etc.
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 Mon 10 Jun 13 14:00 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - idle_chatterer
>>
>> Vauxhall would sell you a 2.0 injection Cavalier in 1990 that would do 60 in
>> under 9 seconds, 130 mph, 35 mpg, and a near guaranteed 200,000 miles without anything
>> going wrong with it.
>>
>>

Must confess my experience with a 1991 J 1.8 Cavalier (bought new) wasn't great - rust, wiring loom failure, steering rack failure, water leaks. In fact it was carp. Only had 1 year warranty in those days too. I got rid of it as soon as I could afford to for a Citroen ZX 1.9D (had to trade down due to money lost in foolhardy purchase of the Cavalier). That ZX was completely reliable for 7 years and 100K+ miles with various members of my family.

Like a broken record, my 'reliability experience' peaked with a 2003 Mondeo III 2.0 Petrol Estate.
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 15:11 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - Zero
VW's biggest problem is unfulfilled expectations, if only everything were as dependable as their marketing department!
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 9 Jun 13 at 15:12
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 15:23 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - DP
>> VW's biggest problem is unfulfilled expectations, if only everything were as dependable as their marketing
>> department!
>>

Very true. They've been trading on their reputation for years, and I say that as a satisfied owner.
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 15:30 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - Bill Payer
>> Very true. They've been trading on their reputation for years, and I say that as
>> a satisfied owner.
>>
We've had a Golf for a couple of years and I must say I don't like the dealer at all. It's the same group as own the local Mercedes dealer but the VW dealer is much more "corporate" - you call them up to book a service and they transfer you to a call-centre who have no idea what they're talking about. I can negotiate service costs with the dealer on my Merc but with VW they won't have any of that.

Last time I was in there a very dismayed customer was told his car maybe needed a software upgrade as a first step to fixing a fault but as it was out of warranty he's have to pay. Seems wrong to me, especially if they're not sure it's going to work.
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 21:48 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - Rudedog
Well I'm going to have to stand up for buying German, I've been a happy customer of VW since my first proper car which was a MK2 Golf, since then I've only had Golfs and my wife has had Polos (one which helped her walk away from an accident where she rolled it a couple of times).

Maybe I've been lucky but in all of that time I haven't once gone to my car not feeling that the car would start or I would not complete my journey.

I do have to agree that the dealerships have changed big time, our local dealer was a family run business where you could pitch up at short notice and see a technician almost straight way, now it seems to be the polar opposite and on a par with trying to get a GP's appointment!

On the whole though I would nearly always go for any product that was either made in Germany or was at least designed by them over anything made outside of Europe, the majority of my main household items (excluding TVs) are made by a German company and so far proved to be cost reliable.
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 Sun 9 Jun 13 22:41 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - rtj70
Some of my experience of VWs:

- 1999 Golf GTI 1.8T - needed a new gearbox and turbo charger shortly after (as in weeks) of delivery. Also a noisy seat that was tricky to sort.... who knows what else might have gone wrong because it was stolen.

- 2000 Passat Sport 1.8T - needed a new turbo charger from 0 miles (as in from when I collected it)... dealer insisted it was gearbox which was changed first. And an annoying whistle from the door mirror took some time to identify cause and to fix it. Had an airbag problem but I suspect it was linked to an accident I was involved in.

So you'd think I wouldn't want another VW.... but now have a 2011 Passat CC from new. Only problem so far was a cracked windscreen.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Sun 9 Jun 13 at 22:42
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 Mon 10 Jun 13 10:54 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - DP
>> - 1999 Golf GTI 1.8T - needed a new gearbox and turbo charger shortly after
>> (as in weeks) of delivery. Also a noisy seat that was tricky to sort.... who
>> knows what else might have gone wrong because it was stolen.

I had the same car, same year with starship mileage. My experience could not be more different, although admittedly we only had it about a year. I remember it as a nice car, although not a proper GTI.

My praise for our old mk4 GT TDI 130 is well documented on here. It's been a great car and has cost buttons to run over 5 years. Cleaned and polished the old girl last weekend and still shines up well.
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 Mon 10 Jun 13 13:39 
 Volkswagen - Volkswagens terrible reliability report - idle_chatterer
Interested HJ quoting the story from the local Aussie media outfit pretty much verbatim.

I posted this in the Toyota recall thread www.car4play.com/forum/post/index.htm?m=321290&v=e

The coroner's case is ongoing, the reporting appears to me to conflate many (no doubt real) problems experienced by owners but I think that using it to beat up VW over DSG box problems is a little unfair given that the car in the ongoing case was a manual, also - why not Audi and Skoda who fit the same gubbins ?

My own experience of 3 VW Golfs is that our MK4 was OKish (apart from a thirst for oil, lambda senor and coils), our first MK 6 was faultless and our current MK6 has only had a cup-holder failure thus far (and it's both twin-charger and DSG - quelle horreur). By contrast my Audis both had major clutch failures, our Civic FN3 had many suspension and ECU woes whereas Ford Mondeos were faultless. My BMW E91 was also faultless despite the variable servicing regime and a supposedly cheese turbo. I couldn't begin to recount the faults I've had with Vauxhalls ranging from a Nova SRi via a dreadful Cavalier to the nightmare Vectra, hence my post in the related thread.

Obviously I'm waiting to see what transpires since I drive a VW and live in Australia...

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