I'm never buying a VW ever, bloody ever again...

AS some of you know, due to countless redundancies, I'm now in the black club of driving a taxi and self employed.

My first car was a 2001 TDDi Ford Mondeo - I bought it with 263,000 miles with a full service history as it was already a taxi.

The only mechanical failure where I could not drive home was a drive shaft.

At 360,000 miles, stuff did physically wear out but nothing that I couldnt deal with at the side of the road with a swiss army knife or a gallon of steering fluid

Bought a 2001 1.9TDi SE Passat for the missus, full history, etc, reasonable miles.

Its my 'new' old taxi

Not even done 30,000 miles in it yet:

broken window regulator

indicators stopped working

Headlights kept going out

Serpentine belt pulley/ tentioner knackered

electric mirror switch fell apart

MAF sensor failed

Boost control valve failed

now, after barely 4 hours kip, the ******* thing wakes me up at 8am with its pissy alarm system going off, regardless of whether the cars locked/ unlocked.

So, bar the odd mechanical with ford (steering pump/ rack (within part warranty), drive shaft), this 'Dub is a lemon....

My missus bought a second hand Fiat Brava, 51 plate, and has covered nearly 40,000 miles in the same period - her car, the bonnet catch seized because it was never opened....

&*()*&^^%* !!!!!


:evil: :evil: :evil:

I'm sure there are plenty of happy VW owners who think their car was blessed by Jesus' body aroma but checking forums, theirs also alot of pissed off owners too.

german cars feel well built but are pretty shocking for reliability. that ford TDDi engine was crap, but indestructable crap. after the nuclear holocaust, there will be cockroaches driving TD mondeos with gaffer taped bumpers

cce":26xq1fs0 said:

german cars feel well built but are pretty shocking for reliability. that ford TDDi engine was crap, but indestructable crap. after the nuclear holocaust, there will be cockroaches driving TD mondeos with gaffer taped bumpers

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it was the 'in between' engine, a step up from that awfull 1.8 TD but with its cam chain and 16 valves, much better.

the 1.8 TD need cambelts every 5 mins.

The later TDCi has a whole heap of new maladies

Your VW sounds as bad as my Skoda Octavia when I was taxi driving.

I had:

Clutch pressure plate and flywheel warped.

Rear screen just exploded on new years day - luckily not the night before!

Rear washer motor caught fire - I had to rip the boot lining of and unplug it when I saw the smoke coming out.

Drive shaft came apart at the flanges.

Switch went on brake pedal which controls fuel flow, but they didn't tell me it also puts the brake lights on. Found out two days later!

Probably more stuff as well. I'll add it to the list as I remember!

It was Pooh! :twisted:

Go jap.

Lesson learned.

another fordy on the cards then ????

you do happen to see lots of VWs - golfs esp with dodgy electrics. alarms going off, or alarms that cant be activated/cancelled; flickering tail lights etc. I reckon cos theyve got the market sewn up with this reliability/quality image, they dont have to work at it.

My bro used to work for a major uk steel firm and he was a technical sales guy in the engineering steels sector. He regularly visited ford and vw. He asid that vw rejected something rediculuous like 6 out of 10 cars that came off the line and sent them for rectification. Whether this reflects on bad workmanship or good QC is up for debate.
He also said that they seemed to accept (relatively) crappy stuff from the supplier. He said Ford was the one to crack. They were heavy with audits and QC and it was industry shop-talk that if you were good enough for ford, you'd made it.

I heard a story about VW once which seems to reflect your problems. In times past the quality control dept. was almost as big as the factory itself, In effect many cars were built twice as they had to put right all the factory failings before releasing the car for sale :shock:

Maybe your example sneaked past quality control during a tea break :roll:

Kind of goes against the idea of germanic quality :?

I have to disagree with 'All German cars being unreliable'. I have had several BMWs. 2 5 series and now my third 3 series and i have never had a problem with one. I am aware theat Mercedes these days are crap ad are some offerings from the VAG group but its pot luck isnt it really.

dorsetbikeloving":2xhekzkx said:

its pot luck isnt it really.

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i agree , my sister had a mk2 vw jetta gti 16v and that was a nightmare , 1 brand new loom and 10 nights later (fitted it myself ) it was like a diffrent car....................

now she has a 2.8i capri....................... don't get me started