Since I started university I drove my mums old VW Golf IV. It was a special edition (99 Edition) and was first registered end of April 1999.
I got it with 184k km and now drove it to 206k km over the past 2 years and 3 months.
It was a pretty basic car, but it never stranded me and never really let me down.
It had replacement motor at 70k km (I think) and a new transmission at 140k km. Last year it passed TÜV inspection but we had to invest about 1200€ in several different repairs and I had to invest another 300€ in tires shortly before that.
Ever since then it kind of always had some issue or another. Stearing got fixed, there was a small electrical issue and as it was a manual the clutch became worse and worse (more on that later).
It was the smallest motor version (75hp naturaly asparated) and those were known to get troublesome at about 200k km and beyond.
So visiting family means about 1300km driving round trip since I moved and basicly every time I drove that distance some new issue came up.
Now, one of the wheel bearings was getting bad and getting loud which would have been another 200€ repair.
Our local mechanic shop offered to buy it for 600€ as is with 1 year till the next TÜV inspection, the bluetooth radio I put in there and all the dents and scratches that accumulated.
Given that both of my brothers drove that car before me and every one of us caused a substantial insurance claim for the vehicle in one way or another, that car had lived its life.
So my mum and I set out for a new car. Given that that decission was made on the 23rd of december, time wasn't on our side.
Now, ever since day one the Golf had a HORRIBLE clutch.
It was replaced and readjusted several times over the cars lifetime, but it always had about 1/4" of play on the clutch pedal, then about 1/2" of clutch way from fully engaged to fully disengaged and then 5" of dead pedal space.
Combined with the underpowered motor and the cars weight, it was nightmare to drive in stop and go traffic, especially if you didn't have much driving experience.
If you could drive that car, you could drive any manual.
But that pushed me towards wanting an automatic. Simply more convenient for what I use that car for.
So a quick search brought up almost the exact car I wanted.
I searched for an automatic in our price range with less then 50k km.
And BAM the car came up: A Polo from late 2010 (as it was a dealership car it is a 2011 model year already) with DSG and only 40k km on it.
It did have 3 previous owners (a dealership, a short term registration for a customer and then 1 true owner) and had been traded in by the last owner as he needed something bigger.
It's "Team" edition 3-door (only thing that really could have put me off it was it being a 3-door), so it is mid-line trim with a few comfort features like automatic wiper adjustment, cruise control, heated front seats and rear park distance control.
Dosen't have a bluetooth radio, so I'll have to fit a new radio.
The DSG on the Polo was only avaible on the larger mainstream motors, so I do have a 1.2l TSI motor with 105hp.
It came with both summer and winter tires, and as it had a few dents (nothing large, the typical shopping cart dent in the tailgate and the typical door ding on the passenger side) the price was more then acceptable as well, especially given they gave us a one year warranty as well.
We registered it yesterday and a few hours later I took it for the first journey back up north.
It certainly is a bit smaller then the Golf was, but as I rarely have more then 1 passenger, that isn't a big issue.
This first longer journey (660km) was a blessing compared to with the Golf.
The DSG is pretty good, shifts are basicly unnoticeable most of the time. The motor has plenty of oomph for such a small car yet is relativley efficent (total average usage was 7,6l per 100km according to the board computer, which is about 1,5l less then the Golf, both driven at the same speed and load round about).
Cruise control is such a nice feature especially on the last leg of my journey (the entirety of the Autobahn A31, about 225km of 2 lane per direction highway with largely no speed limit and verry little traffic for the most part).
However I still have to get used to the kick down reaction of gearbox.
Given it is a turbocharged motor, the behaviour makes sense, but IMO is triggered far to easily:
Let's say you've been going through a construction zone with an 80kmh (50mph) speed limit. The DSG goes into its highest gear there (7th gear) and brings usage down to less then 5l per 100km.
That ends so there is no speed limit anymore, thus you want to speed up.
With this car, it either dosen't shift down at all and thus accelerates verry slowly as the engine rpm is to low for the turbo to really kick in or it shifts down all the way to 3rd or 4th gear.
It takes an ever so short moment before the car decides to execute the kickdown procedure.
As it has to jump a few gears, shifting takes just a verry short but noticeable moment. During that verry short moment the motor (technicly being disengaged from both gear trains during those jump shift downs) ramps up, thus the turbo kicks in as well.
Now the lower gear engages and the car suddenly janks forward. Not in a dangerous way and the car quickly shifts back up again without any hickups, but that sudden change in acceleration can be quite surprising given the otherwise seamless shifting. That whole decission-clutch disengagement - downshift - reengagement dosen't even take a second probably which makes the whole thing even more starteling if you don't know about it yet.
There is no real middleground either while in automatic mode. The 2 ways I found around that are either via the cruise control (the cruise control has a verry soft acceleration curve, so if you keep the cruise control setting from before slowing down by just deactivating the cruise control by either tapping the break or hitting the cancel button before slowing down and then just resume that previous setting once you can go faster again, the car usually only shifts down one gear) or by switching to Tiptronic mode before accelerating again and either staying in seventh gear or switching down one or two gears. Once you accelerated enough you switch back to automatic control.
(Tiptronic means you push the gear selector to the right while in Drive mode D; now you decide the shifts by either pushing the lever froward to shift up or back to shift down, the system only blocks out improper shifts that would lead to red lining or to low rpms and executes shifts automaticly if the engine rpm gets close to red line or gets to low if you do not demand the shifts.)
Also the shifting software is pretty bad at using engine breaking in city trafic. The car more often then not stays in 6th gear for the majority of you slowing down in front of a red light.
But I'm happy with it, really happy actually, as long as it proofs reliable enough.
These motors had issues with their control chains lengthening after as little as 5k km from new due to design and material issues.
Replacing the chain is 500-700€ and if you don't notice its noises prior to failure or are unlucky, it either slips or just rips appart completly and causes extensive to uneconomicaly to repair motor damage.
My car did not have the chain replaced yet, but has been more then well checked up by the dealer and given my usage, if the chain were to be of bad quality and properties, its failure would probably still fall in the warranty period.
The gear box or dual clutch assembly isn't that much more expensive then its manual 6-speed counter part, but the mechatronic unit controling the shifting is pretty costly. There have been cases of failures of these units on early versions due to some software issues (and often careless use; if you only rest your foot on the break slightly when at a stoplight for example, it is possible that the software mistakes that for you wanting to crawl verry slowly even though your car dosen't move letting the clutch slip for to long, thus the newer software has a greater delay before trying to engage the clutch and overall reduces clutch slip time; another issues was apparently a bug in the shifting software causing increased numbers of shifts in the non-engaged geartrain executed rapidly after another up and down when the car was in certain load scenarios which were on the border of the car preselecting either the next gear up or down causing the mechatronic unit to wear out far quicker then usual, that was simply resolved by adding 'overhang' so the system only changes preselected gear if there is a verry clear change in load).
My goal would be to keep this car around till I finish university. Once I have a full earning I could invest in a new car and given my average amount of driving, the car would still have some resell value.
And these cars are known to be fairly reliable and often cheap to repair, so I'm optimistic with that.
I got it with 184k km and now drove it to 206k km over the past 2 years and 3 months.
It was a pretty basic car, but it never stranded me and never really let me down.
It had replacement motor at 70k km (I think) and a new transmission at 140k km. Last year it passed TÜV inspection but we had to invest about 1200€ in several different repairs and I had to invest another 300€ in tires shortly before that.
Ever since then it kind of always had some issue or another. Stearing got fixed, there was a small electrical issue and as it was a manual the clutch became worse and worse (more on that later).
It was the smallest motor version (75hp naturaly asparated) and those were known to get troublesome at about 200k km and beyond.
So visiting family means about 1300km driving round trip since I moved and basicly every time I drove that distance some new issue came up.
Now, one of the wheel bearings was getting bad and getting loud which would have been another 200€ repair.
Our local mechanic shop offered to buy it for 600€ as is with 1 year till the next TÜV inspection, the bluetooth radio I put in there and all the dents and scratches that accumulated.
Given that both of my brothers drove that car before me and every one of us caused a substantial insurance claim for the vehicle in one way or another, that car had lived its life.
So my mum and I set out for a new car. Given that that decission was made on the 23rd of december, time wasn't on our side.
Now, ever since day one the Golf had a HORRIBLE clutch.
It was replaced and readjusted several times over the cars lifetime, but it always had about 1/4" of play on the clutch pedal, then about 1/2" of clutch way from fully engaged to fully disengaged and then 5" of dead pedal space.
Combined with the underpowered motor and the cars weight, it was nightmare to drive in stop and go traffic, especially if you didn't have much driving experience.
If you could drive that car, you could drive any manual.
But that pushed me towards wanting an automatic. Simply more convenient for what I use that car for.
So a quick search brought up almost the exact car I wanted.
I searched for an automatic in our price range with less then 50k km.
And BAM the car came up: A Polo from late 2010 (as it was a dealership car it is a 2011 model year already) with DSG and only 40k km on it.
It did have 3 previous owners (a dealership, a short term registration for a customer and then 1 true owner) and had been traded in by the last owner as he needed something bigger.
It's "Team" edition 3-door (only thing that really could have put me off it was it being a 3-door), so it is mid-line trim with a few comfort features like automatic wiper adjustment, cruise control, heated front seats and rear park distance control.
Dosen't have a bluetooth radio, so I'll have to fit a new radio.
The DSG on the Polo was only avaible on the larger mainstream motors, so I do have a 1.2l TSI motor with 105hp.
It came with both summer and winter tires, and as it had a few dents (nothing large, the typical shopping cart dent in the tailgate and the typical door ding on the passenger side) the price was more then acceptable as well, especially given they gave us a one year warranty as well.
We registered it yesterday and a few hours later I took it for the first journey back up north.
It certainly is a bit smaller then the Golf was, but as I rarely have more then 1 passenger, that isn't a big issue.
This first longer journey (660km) was a blessing compared to with the Golf.
The DSG is pretty good, shifts are basicly unnoticeable most of the time. The motor has plenty of oomph for such a small car yet is relativley efficent (total average usage was 7,6l per 100km according to the board computer, which is about 1,5l less then the Golf, both driven at the same speed and load round about).
Cruise control is such a nice feature especially on the last leg of my journey (the entirety of the Autobahn A31, about 225km of 2 lane per direction highway with largely no speed limit and verry little traffic for the most part).
However I still have to get used to the kick down reaction of gearbox.
Given it is a turbocharged motor, the behaviour makes sense, but IMO is triggered far to easily:
Let's say you've been going through a construction zone with an 80kmh (50mph) speed limit. The DSG goes into its highest gear there (7th gear) and brings usage down to less then 5l per 100km.
That ends so there is no speed limit anymore, thus you want to speed up.
With this car, it either dosen't shift down at all and thus accelerates verry slowly as the engine rpm is to low for the turbo to really kick in or it shifts down all the way to 3rd or 4th gear.
It takes an ever so short moment before the car decides to execute the kickdown procedure.
As it has to jump a few gears, shifting takes just a verry short but noticeable moment. During that verry short moment the motor (technicly being disengaged from both gear trains during those jump shift downs) ramps up, thus the turbo kicks in as well.
Now the lower gear engages and the car suddenly janks forward. Not in a dangerous way and the car quickly shifts back up again without any hickups, but that sudden change in acceleration can be quite surprising given the otherwise seamless shifting. That whole decission-clutch disengagement - downshift - reengagement dosen't even take a second probably which makes the whole thing even more starteling if you don't know about it yet.
There is no real middleground either while in automatic mode. The 2 ways I found around that are either via the cruise control (the cruise control has a verry soft acceleration curve, so if you keep the cruise control setting from before slowing down by just deactivating the cruise control by either tapping the break or hitting the cancel button before slowing down and then just resume that previous setting once you can go faster again, the car usually only shifts down one gear) or by switching to Tiptronic mode before accelerating again and either staying in seventh gear or switching down one or two gears. Once you accelerated enough you switch back to automatic control.
(Tiptronic means you push the gear selector to the right while in Drive mode D; now you decide the shifts by either pushing the lever froward to shift up or back to shift down, the system only blocks out improper shifts that would lead to red lining or to low rpms and executes shifts automaticly if the engine rpm gets close to red line or gets to low if you do not demand the shifts.)
Also the shifting software is pretty bad at using engine breaking in city trafic. The car more often then not stays in 6th gear for the majority of you slowing down in front of a red light.
But I'm happy with it, really happy actually, as long as it proofs reliable enough.
These motors had issues with their control chains lengthening after as little as 5k km from new due to design and material issues.
Replacing the chain is 500-700€ and if you don't notice its noises prior to failure or are unlucky, it either slips or just rips appart completly and causes extensive to uneconomicaly to repair motor damage.
My car did not have the chain replaced yet, but has been more then well checked up by the dealer and given my usage, if the chain were to be of bad quality and properties, its failure would probably still fall in the warranty period.
The gear box or dual clutch assembly isn't that much more expensive then its manual 6-speed counter part, but the mechatronic unit controling the shifting is pretty costly. There have been cases of failures of these units on early versions due to some software issues (and often careless use; if you only rest your foot on the break slightly when at a stoplight for example, it is possible that the software mistakes that for you wanting to crawl verry slowly even though your car dosen't move letting the clutch slip for to long, thus the newer software has a greater delay before trying to engage the clutch and overall reduces clutch slip time; another issues was apparently a bug in the shifting software causing increased numbers of shifts in the non-engaged geartrain executed rapidly after another up and down when the car was in certain load scenarios which were on the border of the car preselecting either the next gear up or down causing the mechatronic unit to wear out far quicker then usual, that was simply resolved by adding 'overhang' so the system only changes preselected gear if there is a verry clear change in load).
My goal would be to keep this car around till I finish university. Once I have a full earning I could invest in a new car and given my average amount of driving, the car would still have some resell value.
And these cars are known to be fairly reliable and often cheap to repair, so I'm optimistic with that.