German stuff . . .
Is pretty overrated in my opinion with regard to reliability. My '02 VW TDI, bought new and carefully cared for, required over $9000 of warranty work in the first three years and 70,000 miles. That was mainly a new engine and turbo after the OEM turbo failed in a spectacular way, throwing the tubine through the casing and shrapnel into the engine. VW managed to install a new engine and turbo in seven weeks (yes, it took that long!), but the replacement turbo was bad from the start. After two months of having boost problems that caused the computer to cut all boost, making it impossible to maintain more than 55 mph on some freeways, I got fed up enough to buy a new turbo with my own money, and install it myself. I also disassembled it first to check for defects. This one has been fine, but one good turbo out of three isn't a good track record; guess that's what happens when you build turbos in Romania. The timing belt tensioner on the second engine failed after 10,000 miles, but thankfully it turned the check engine light on due to the resulting erratic injection pump timing. I drove home carefully figuring the pump was going out only to find a floppy belt - the locating tab on the tensioner had sheared off, made a longitudinal split through the center of the belt, and fallen down into the engine bay. I bought $300 worth of specialized tools to check the timing and it hadn't jumped a tooth, thank God. A new tensioner and belt fixed that but had I not been careful and lucky it would have been another new engine. Shortly before 100,000 miles the airbag computer went, but gave error codes for four of the six airbags. VW recommended replacing the airbags per the manual, but it didn't make sense to me. After driving around for a few months with my laptop in the car I was able to figure out a repeatable pattern of the error codes, and an airbag specialist pinpointed the computer as the culprit. According the manual, if the computer goes bad it's supposed to give it's own error code but the specialist said they often don't do this and are only diagnosed after the airbags are replaced. All this on a car that had never been wrecked or flooded, or even in a body shop.
It now has 145,000 on it and runs well, but I'm having troubles keeping the right front suspension bushings from fallilng apart. I've been through several replacements but they don't last. I really don't think all of the VW OEM parts are the same quality as originally supplied. Even the solid R32/Audi TT bushings don't last. Suffice it to say I do enjoy the diesel mileage, but this will be my first and last German car. I'm hoping Chrysler will bring over some real Fiats or Alfas, as my old Fiat X1/9s (I had three of 'em over a 20 year period) took some maintainance but never had big failures like the VW, plus they were easy to work on. The VW is a pain, doing the timing belt required removal of a three piece engine mount and the power steering reservoir, plus replacement of lots of one-use-only stretch bolts . . . grrr . . .
