I dislike VW because I was a former owner of a 2001 Jetta Wolfsburg, and it was the biggest hunk of garbage I have ever spent money on. The cars are great for their first 30k miles, and quickly show the corner-cutting put into building (plastic oil dipstick tubes, shitty electronics, etc).
I owned that car 2.5 years. It was VW certified with 28k miles on it when I bought it. From 28k to 80k, I went through a center console, glove box, four power window switches (three driver's door, one rear passenger door), a trunk release (the actual hardware - rigged it with zip ties and a spring from a bic click pen and it lasted longer than the factory hardware), a coolant temperature sensor, four mass airflow sensors, bank 2 o2 sensor, an engine wiring harness, rear brake caliper hardware, two front wheel bearings, and a transmission and clutch (trans failure was at 31k miles, btw).
It was cheaper for me to get out of the car into a more expensive (at the time) Sentra SE-R Spec V (2004 model) than to keep driving and fixing it.
I don't know how anything is from model 2010 going forward, but any VW I've seen with age has had quality problems. I have had things break on my Nissans, but I have never been concerned with being able to get to where I need to go when I turned the key. There were several times when I turned the key to start my Jetta and I had plans for someone to come get me along the way just in case. That's just unacceptable for a car with that age and mileage to me. I would say I might have had a lemon, but I had several friends with that generation Jetta and GTI that had several significant problems as well.
I hate it because the car was a BLAST when it worked. I loved it. But when it broke it was never less than $400 to fix. That was a tough pill for a poor college kid.
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