VW dealer

[SkaBob]

Bought it new, but it didn't hit lemon law criteria in Michigan...here, the same repair has to happen 3 times within the first year, or over $10k in repairs in the first year...I had the car for 3-4 years.

What really nailed it home that I wasn't going to buy another new era VW was the way VW of America treated me about the whole thing (I could go on for HOURS with stories), and that VW AG in Germany was tripping all over themselves to apologize for it, but couldn't do anything to force VW of America to not be a bunch of shitheels.

So, any time I or someone I know look at a VW, I make sure it's 1990 or older so I know it wasn't made in a second rate shop in mexibrazil...

Also,

Sure it's a goofy car for a tall ass guy to drive...but you'll need another 10 years to get anywhere NEAR the number of looks and smiles on the road from girls that I got :twisted:

oh, and...

http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/tuners/112_0106_2001_hpa_volkswagen_beetle/index.html

THAT's why I bought it...if it hadn't been such a heap, I'd have converted it.

 

[tumpsi]

heh. VW's seem to be quite different in europe from what you guys say.

 

[SkaBob]

It's more that the COMPANY is different in Europe. VW of America is a separate corporate entity from VWAG, and is completely independant from them in all management decisions.

The only products with a VW name plate that come to North America from the German factories are the special editions: GTI, GLI, R32, etc...

VWoA is all about saving their own money, even if it means telling their customers outright lies...

My Beetle, for example... A good friend of mine works in the repair bay under VWoA's headquarters, doing the repairs on the cars that were so phenomenally messed up that VW bought them back from their customers. He showed me the memo regarding the problem with my car. A batch of the master/slave cylinders was faulty, and wasn't producing enough pressure to completely disengage the clutch when you put the clutch pedal to the floor. Because of that, any time you were waiting at a light, or something like that, you were slipping (and eventually burning) your clutch.

The VW dealership, and the special inspector they sent out when I raised hell about it, said it was my fault. The special inspector said he'd been a mechanic on VW's race teams, and that he couldn't think of how you could do what happened to my clutch even in a race car...but they were going to say I was racing (a lie) in my paperwork, and deny my claim anyways, and told me there was no such information regarding the hydraulics, even when I showed them the copy I made of the memo.

Combine that with the 1991 model year changeover from importing VWs to building them in Mexico and Brazil with cut-rate labor, and you get a pretty clear picture of the difference between VWoA and VWAG.

 

[RoomTenONine]

VWoA blows and it only takes a few searches on a forum like VWVortex to see why. Bob's experience is not random. It is a chronic disease of VWoA to not stand by the cars nor helping customers. They will outright lie even when factual evidence is presented to them just to weasel out of paying for their mistake. The cars are awesome, but some are prone to issues that VWoA drags its feet on before a recall or they don't man up and help someone who clearly has a random bad car like Bob did.

I have to say Audi has been nothing but amazing with my car so far, but then again I haven't had any major issues outside of a bad EGT sensor that they repaired under warranty no questions asked. I know VW is hemorrhaging because of folks taking their cars to independents once out of warranty (and even in warranty when VWoA balks at coverage for inane reasons as they did with Bob. Also finding a dealership that is willing to work with you and tell VWoA what it wants to hear so they pay up is crucial, but you should be able to go ANYWHERE and not have service issues.

For so long VW tried to recapture that "driver's wanted" mentality, but when you had any issues they blamed you for actually driving the car (i.e. racing).

 

[whridlsoncestood]

Combine that with the 1991 model year changeover from importing VWs to building them in Mexico and Brazil with cut-rate labor, and you get a pretty clear picture of the difference between VWoA and VWAG.

This is not a true peice of info here. VWoA has always been producing cars in mexico and brazil. Even before 91. Up until about 2000 I think mexico was still making the air cooled beetles and busses. Just look at the vin number. If it starts with 3VW its mexican. WVW means built in wolfsburg Germany.

 

[RoomTenONine]

Combine that with the 1991 model year changeover from importing VWs to building them in Mexico and Brazil with cut-rate labor, and you get a pretty clear picture of the difference between VWoA and VWAG.

This is not a true peice of info here. VWoA has always been producing cars in mexico and brazil. Even before 91. Up until about 2000 I think mexico was still making the air cooled beetles and busses. Just look at the vin number. If it starts with 3VW its mexican. WVW means built in wolfsburg Germany.

Yup. Mexico was making VWs even in the 60s!

One thing to keep in mind is that most of the major faulty parts on the newer generation cars are from 3rd party companies. Like the ignition coils on the MKIV chassis.

 

[whridlsoncestood]

Combine that with the 1991 model year changeover from importing VWs to building them in Mexico and Brazil with cut-rate labor, and you get a pretty clear picture of the difference between VWoA and VWAG.

This is not a true peice of info here. VWoA has always been producing cars in mexico and brazil. Even before 91. Up until about 2000 I think mexico was still making the air cooled beetles and busses. Just look at the vin number. If it starts with 3VW its mexican. WVW means built in wolfsburg Germany.

Yup. Mexico was making VWs even in the 60s!

One thing to keep in mind is that most of the major faulty parts on the newer generation cars are from 3rd party companies. Like the ignition coils on the MKIV chassis.

Talking coilpacks on the VR's? Big problem on those. You have to go all bosch electronics on these cars.

 

[Jesse B 707]

i was actually considering buying a VW before this thread too.....thanks for the heads up

 

[whridlsoncestood]

Cool.
Rancho?

Yes it is rancho.

 

[whridlsoncestood]

i was actually considering buying a VW before this thread too.....thanks for the heads up

I have never gone back. I love my corrado. Every car has their quirks. VW's have one of the biggest die hard followings tho. Its got to mean something. They are a blast to drive.

 

[RoomTenONine]

Combine that with the 1991 model year changeover from importing VWs to building them in Mexico and Brazil with cut-rate labor, and you get a pretty clear picture of the difference between VWoA and VWAG.

This is not a true peice of info here. VWoA has always been producing cars in mexico and brazil. Even before 91. Up until about 2000 I think mexico was still making the air cooled beetles and busses. Just look at the vin number. If it starts with 3VW its mexican. WVW means built in wolfsburg Germany.

Yup. Mexico was making VWs even in the 60s!

One thing to keep in mind is that most of the major faulty parts on the newer generation cars are from 3rd party companies. Like the ignition coils on the MKIV chassis.

Talking coilpacks on the VR's? Big problem on those. You have to go all bosch electronics on these cars.

They were even worse on the 1.8Ts. There were like 5 different manufacturers and they had super high fail rates leaving the car immobile if one went out. They were super expensive too until VW got sued and did a recall. I believe Bosch made the final working versions.

 

[RoomTenONine]

i was actually considering buying a VW before this thread too.....thanks for the heads up

You have to realize we are talking Mk III and IV mostly. I've heard nothing but great things about the Mk V and upcoming VI chassis. The latest GTi is an amazing little car. It it were AWD I'd have bought one.

They are super fun cars, regardless. You have to realize if we started talking about American cars we'd have 100,000 times more complaints about the cars and the dealer support.

FWIW, the two MkIV 1.8Ts I owned had almost zero issues, even the chronic ones we have discussed here. I was also putting over 300hp to the ground and retaining daily drivability.

 

[AciDBatH666]

I love my '08 MKV. I've got APR stage 1 on it giving me a 50hp/100 ft/lbs boost.
Shit hauls balls. ROASTS the tires when I turn the stability control off. Fastest I've run on my Iphone Dynolicious ap is a 14.2. With traction I think I could SQUEEEEEEEEEEZe into a high 13.9

 

[whridlsoncestood]

I haven't taken my corrado to a 1/4 mile track. I auto-x it. When I get an iPhone next month I'll have to see what I put down in it. I dynoed it last year before it was fine tuned and I think I came out with 130 HP for a nice light car.

 

[AciDBatH666]

Here's my 14.2 charts. The Graph is wheel horse, not crank. The traction was pretty bad with the stage 1. A 2.61 60' proves it. My blazer was a LAUNCH machine and ran a 2.21 60'.

Stock, well... with just an intake I ran a 14.9 and peaked at 201 hp

 

[RoomTenONine]

Bah, you shouldda seen my stage 3 on race gas. Heheheh. How accurate is that iPhone app?

 

[AciDBatH666]

Its pretty damn good. I don't ever consider the times I get with it to be 100%, but at least I get a pretty good idea of what I'm actually running. A couple of years ago I went to the track with a friend's gtech and my MrDyno to make some runs and chck to see how accurate each was. The gtech was .1 slow and the mrdyno was .1 fast. Both were fairly consisent tho. I think my mrdyno would of been more accurate if I would of had an accurate weight on my blazer. The gtech was just plug and go. Mr dyno required some calibrating and data entered. Iphone's Accelerometer works just like gtech. Just plug and play. Ido have my weight entered into it tho. You need that to get a hp reading.

But all in all it's fairly accurate. There's ppl on YouTube who have tested it at the track to see how accurate it is

 

[cali]

sig.

 

[SkaBob]

The VIN bit isn't quite accurate... My beetle's VIN started with 3VW and had a stamp plate saying it was made in Pueblo, Brazil...

but that's splitting hairs, really...

I also agree that it's not necessarily the construction that dictates the reliability (for example, the hydraulics problem with mine wasn't a VW fault, it was whoever made the cylinders), but friends at a VW repair shop, and my buddy that worked at VW said the German ones are typically more reliably well-built. The sheer number of things that went wrong with mine supports this, compared to the German built mk2s I worked on. The majority of problems I ever had to deal with on mk2 and older were related to rust and long-term (several hundred thousand miles) wear.