recent large Volkswagens-2015 up

[cadman]

Perhaps VW has upped their game after the Dieselgate Scandal, putting profits ahead of the environment, I don't know as I say "never again".

I can only speak to my wife's Golf TDI Mk IV. She loved the car, and while we never had trouble with the engine nor manual gearbox, I really got tired of 'fixing' the little things.

Apparently, the car wasn't intended for use in areas where weather includes "snow".

1. The door seals were a special design that would freeze to the inside of the door, such that opening the door would rip them right off the body, rivets and all!

2. The oil pan was cast aluminum and located at the lowest point of the undercarriage without any protection...a chunk of ice on a residential street was enough to split it open, leaving a trail of black diesel oil in its wake. I changed the pan using VW's proprietary gasket sealer, laying on a dirt floor in sub zero temps. It was a success, until a week later when the car had to be towed to a VW specialist for a different reason, and the tow truck driver ended up cracking the new pan, too.

3. The wipers, rather than 'stall by design' if they were frozen in place or encountered any amount of snow, had slip washers that would allow the motor to run completely disengaged from the wiper arms. Now you have no functional wipers until you pop the caps on the arms and get out your socket set. Not fun when it's below freezing, pre-dawn, and you have places to be. Over-tightening would result in stress on the system in other places.

4. In cold weather, the ECU would perform a resistance test of the glow plugs on startup, but had a software defect that didn't take into account small resistance changes to the harness or connectors, so it would set a check engine light. It may have even aborted the glow plug power routine (why?!). The only fix was a "new" harness at considerable expense.

There were also lots of little user-interface gripes I had with the car, and repairs I'm sure I've forgotten. My understanding is we dodged a real bullet avoiding the automatic trans. I have friends that had New Beetles during the same time and they had to fight VW to honor their powertrain warranty; their experiences were, shall we say, less than stellar.

 

[gizmo]

Golf 4 and 5 are now (retrospectively) acknowledged to be a low point in the model's history. The auto trans was made by Siemens, it was used in Peugeot, Citroen, Renault as well as VW and was troublesome in all of them, though less so in Renault, I forget exactly why, either by Renault specifying regular trans fluid changes or by specifying a better trans fluid.

 

The VW models the OP asked about, 2015+, are much better cars.

 

[henene4]

I only had 2 cars in my life

First was the 99 Golf 4 I got as a hand me down from my mum.
It was the base engine with the 99 edition package. So nothing fancy, but a good beginner car.

Now I drive a Polo 5 3-door 105hp 7 speed DSG - the rarest configuration of this car - in the Team edition package which is almost full spec.
It's a 2010 model, I bought it 3rd hand on the last few days of 2019, first registered it in my mums name on the 2nd day of 2020.

I bought it at 41k km and now am at just below 86k.
Actually re-registered it and re-insured it under my name just yesterday.

The Golf was just showing it's age and required a lot of maintenance. When it was time to get the wheel bearing replaced (600€) my mum said we should just sell it.
Since it had such a horrible clutch (5 speed manual) I wanted an automatic next.

The Golf - and I think many VWs to this day - have the annoying tendency to get damp over time, no matter how hard you try.
Never saw a Golf over 150k km that didn't have issues with windows frosting up from the inside in winter.

My Polo is currently making some noise that will probably mean I'll have to get the timing chain replaced sooner rather than later.
That was an issue with these motors.
Which is annoying as that's not a cheap repair.

But I've been happy with the DSG.
It's not the typical automatic in terms of smoothness.
While driving you barely ever feel a shift. It might have a second here and there where it isn't sure which gear to choose and thus suddenly shifts in a weired way. But that is rare.
The only thing you have to get used to is starting to move. You have to get your foot of the break prematurely and only get on the gas after a very short pause. The electronics need a quick moment to start engaging the clutch and if you press the gas immediatley it jerks in the clutch for the first gear which makes for a rather rocky start.
Also downshifts are weired since it jumps gears. When every you are cruising above 55km/h or abiut 35mph you are in 7th gear. If you slightly accelerate it will usually shift down to 6th and then to 5th maybe.
If however you are going from 35mph to 60mph or something like that it wants to shift to 3rd or even 2nd gear. Then it just disengages both clutches, shifts all the way down and reengages clutches which is is something you feel.

But it is amazing, fun and snappy to drive.
The updated version of this engine is still in production. It has 5hp more now, is a little more efficent and has an updated chain.

One fun thing I realised that this car does that the manual version certainly dosen't do is quite agressivley change the gas pedal tuning based on DSG and steering data.
In turns the DSG stays in the same gear and speed (say 5 or 4), then when the stearing input is reduced it shifts down and only after the shift down the engine revs up and you accelarte.
Makes driving in turns quicker easier and IMO safer.

 

[sudsmaster]

Lucid Air: well, for about $70k US, it should be nice.

 

[gelaundry4ever]

vw full size sedan

What's the model name of this sedan?

 

[vacerator]

Large VW sedan names;

Passat, and currently Arteo, which replaced the CC sedan coupe. In North America, the frst large FWD VW was the Dasher, then the Quantum (Santana elewhere).

 

[gizmo]

Dasher was the US-market  name of the first Passat.

I've always had a soft spot for them.

 

[cfz2882]

I liked those too..

...with lenghtwise mounted engine and radiator off to the side-Audi style