Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Volkswagen Reliability

subaru. don't look back

I work with a fellow who worked in the auto service business for many years. He has seen every type of vehicle out there from the service end. Here's his top three cars to buy in no order. Honda, Toyota, Subaru.

VW didn't make the list.

If you want a cookie cutter jap car, go konck yourself out.

Slight derail, but I saw an old Bug nicely redone at the VA in P'cola today. Had it all decked out, lime green and a bumper sticker that read "Zero to Sixty in 11 Minutes"!

I worked at a VW , AUDI and Porsche Dealership for 15 years, The title of your original post is an oxymoron. I would rather put another 200k on your honda and put up with a little oil consumtion the deal with the varying and frequent quandaries a VW will provide.

I owned a 911 for a 2 years. Dealer treated me like a king and billed me accordingly!

Taking Automotive Repair classes at the local community college in my spare time...

I get assigned to work on a lot of different cars, old and new...

one good thing about it, is it gives me an opportunity to get an interest in a car, or
determine myself to never own one...

VWs to me are the old Air Cooled stuff, decades gone now... and I had an 81 VW Dasher
Diesel Wagon back in the early 80s I bought new....

Was thinking about a Tiguan for a run around vehicle... friend bought one used and it was
leaking Antifreeze... so I took it over to the college... instructor said it required special tools
that they didn't have and you had to remove the fuel injection to get to the water pump
which was leaking... my friend took it to the dealer, and that was like a $1200 repair bill...

That alone, you couldn't give me a Tiquan now for free....Sadly European Cars seem to be
high priced junk anymore...expensive, hard to work on, no where near as reliable as Japanese and
Korean built cars...

VW and BMW also represent the brands of cars we see most often brought in by people to
work on at the college's automotive program...

even a simple oil change I did on a Passat was even a royal pain in the Fanny...

It's not.

You are describing Honda and Toyota over the last 25+ years or so.

Assuming I've been talked out of the Volkswagen fantasy, and assuming I was going to spend +/- $20k, should I opt for a brand new Civic or a late model used Accord?

My parents have a Jetta Diesel....good car but the dealer is horrible and rude as hell...they bought a Honda mini van las week..
I bought my daughter a civic when she was 14. She is still driving it...she is 27... You will be disappointed with anything other than a Honda...

Son bought an 80 s prelude as a commuter car....it had 280K when he bought it with the odometer broke...he drove it 3 years and never spent a dime on repairs....we couldn't believe how reliable that car was....he still kinda regrets selling it but h likes the accord he replaced it with...

Accord every day of the week. Nicer ride--for the next 150,000 miles. You ain't a sardine.

You fat shaming me...?

This echoes what my mechanic of 25 years told me. "Volkswagens are excellent cars... for about first 100K miles..." After that point, he said they're frustrating, and expen$ive, to work on.






This is my experience, too. Of your choices, I'd probably also go for the Accord, but go over it with a fine-toothed comb if you're going used.

Good luck,

FC

Around 1998 Volkswagen moved a good percentage of their production to Mexico.

They weren't rock solid cars before then but I've had multiple people related to Volkswagen in some form or another tell me they fell off in quality immediately after that.

Was looking for a quote from the VW Chairman online I saw years ago related to him saying the perception of quality is more important actually obtaining quality but the emissions scandal eats up all the google results, but I did find this. VW Chairman Winterkorn caught on film visiting the Hyundai booth at a German auto show.

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Apparently, the Hyundai i30, which competes with VW's Golf model, has a very solid steering wheel adjuster, which prompted Winterkorn to state "It doesn't rattle".

Of course, that wasn't just a statement; it was a complaint that needed an explanation from his staff. He called for Klaus Bischoff, in charge of automotive design at VW, and told him: "BMW can't do it. We can't do it. It doesn't rattle!"

Bischoff, caught on the wrong foot, carefully replies that VW had a solution for the rattling steering wheel adjuster, but it wasn't used in production as it was too expensive. Winterkorn, now visibly upset, shot back: "So why can they do it?" There was no answer.

VW did not stop there. Winterkorn is even shown taking measurements of the i30's interior.

Remember, that all happened while Winterkorn and other high ranking VW executives were at Hyundai's booth with Winterkorn sitting in the i30. We wouldn’t be surprised if Hyundai is going to use this one for a commercial.

Hyundai has always been perceived in Germany as a low-quality, low-price car manufacturer and has been discredited by its rivals especially because of the build and material quality of its products. It appears that VW now has a problem it did not see coming.

I'll probably just keep adding oil a few times per month and see how it goes. Maybe I can squeeze another year or three out of the '08 Civic. Everything else works as it should, and the car runs and drives strong. If it starts giving other problems, I'll get rid of it. I need reliable transportation and don't want the headache associated with ongoing car troubles.

Drive it til it dies. I understand needing reliable transportation, seems like you already have that.

You say oil is being consumed.....if you haven't, it might be worth having a mechanic look at it and see what is causing the consumption and the potential cost to repair. Might not be a catastrophic/overly expensive repair. Maybe you have a local independent who specializes in Hondas who would be knowledgeable yet reasonable in cost. Or, they might be able to find a lower mileage used engine as a replacement and get you another 100k more out of the car.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I had a late 80's VW that was the biggest POS on four wheels. Turned it into a derby car. It was about as reliable as a dry rotted condom.

Wife had a 2004 VW with the little NA 4 cylinder and it does pretty good.

Overall I can't think of a reason to buy one. Lots of better choices in my opinion.