http://www.vw.com/vwhype/heritage/en/us/#/Tomorrow

Oh, and don’t buy into the “VW diesels last forever” hype. They don’t all last forever, as evidenced by my experience.

That’s exactly what happened in China.

VW was the first foreign auto make in China and at one point, it dominated > 50% of all Chinese market share. It has since been surpassed by GM and some other auto makers.

You cannot fool everyone forever. Eventually, the VW craps will stop moving from their dealership lots, in US, in Brazil and in China.

Yeah, but in case you don’t know, even the Jetta is inferior to the Civic.

Fit > Rabbit
Civic > Jetta

Very late to the thread, if anyone reads this..

When stated before the VW has tried and succeded at placing themselves somewhere above Renault, Peugeot, Fiat et al ahahahahahahahahahahahahha

How stupid. People may be slow, but they’re not that stupid. VW’s market share in Europe has taken a hit, and I predict it will continue fallling. C’mon, A Rabbit is worth more than a Focus (European spec)???? By what measure??

VW is deluded. Hope they die and go away.

FWIW. In Brazil, they are behind Fiat and, incredibly, GM, after dominating the market for 30+ yrs. They still have the best selling car, the Gol. But that’s just because Fiat can’t produce the Gol’s main competitor fast enough, due to the fact that the market here is red hot and Fiat is producing 24/7 and don’t have any more capacity.

But they must be hurting. Even their top seller is now being sold at a discount (yes, below the Fiat’s price!!!And the Fiat is sold at full price, and historically amazing a full price which is higher than the VW’s. Think Honda Civic vs. competition in NA and the situation is the same). And though almost every other car maker is running at full spedd, they still have excess capacity!

Way to go VW.

Full disclosure: I have a Palio, the Gol’s competitor and have owned another 5 Fiat cars over the yrs. Though I was brought up on VWs. Due to their lack of any perceived quality over the competition NO ONE in my family has a VW and NO ONE has had any for, oh, over 5 yrs. My dad was the last one who did, a top of the line Rabbit. Sold it after a long trip when his back was hurting so bad due to the misaligned pedals, wheels, seats.

The current tally in my immediate family is Fiat 3 (and my Mom’s getting another one soon), Peugeot 1, Renault 1, Ford 1, Nissan 1 (which will also be probably substituted by a Fiat, brother’s ride). And oh yes, my dad has a VW company car (he had no choice, it came with the job). Which he lends to other people in the office as much as possible and gets a Fiat rental!!!

Meanwhile, Toyota and Honda have eschewed Gedde Watanabe for similar talk show host entertainment; wonder how those cars are going to sell and hold up.

Hopefully that was with synthetic oil, in which case the price is about normal for a dealer synthetic change. I believe VW specifies a 10k mile interval on synthetics.

I never take any of our vehicles to a dealer for routine services. Most of them for most brands rip you off. Many times they add unneeded or even not recommended services like dubious fuel additives, etc.

My first car was a ‘64 Beetle, my Mom bought it new (I think she paid around $1,700.) and I got it in ‘67. When it worked, it was fun to drive as long as you didn’t have to go up any sort of incline (and I mean any sort!!! It had only 40 hp). The heater and defroster NEVER worked, and of course there was no A/C. It had a push button AM radio which my friend promptly broke.

It did have a gas guage. That was a big deal for the Beetle, because they had only started putting gas guages in these cars 2 years before. Imagine, before that you would have to remember to check the gas in the tank using a dip stick every time you drove. It was sort of like a horse and buggy, without the horse.

I remember the clutch going south on that car at least twice while I had it. The good thing was that the car was so light that you could push start it by yourself, just get it rolling, jump in and start it in 2nd gear. Reverse also went out on me. The starter also died several times.

Once I had 12 people in the car at the same time (we were all a lot thinner then), it was a sort of game where you would see who could stuff the most people into the car.

My sister-in law has a 2007 Jetta. She likes it.
A co-worker has a 2007 New Beetle. She “won” the car in a local radio contest. Actually, what she got was a 2 year lease (10,000 miles per year) paid for by the radio station (and by the way, they sent her an IRS 1099 stating she had a $12,000 income because of the lease). The VW dealer charged her $98.00 to do an oil change at 3,000 miles and $250.00 for a 7,500 mile service which consisted of an oil change, tire rotation and “visual inspection”. Nice of them.

Thank you, I’m here all week…try the Chicken Carbonara on wheat.

…ow.

1. Model T: your successor is made in Mexico on a Japanese platform, so how does that make you feel?

2. ‘86 Taurus: Imagine yourself thirty years from now. You’re now boring, based on a Volvo and nobody loves you. Need a hug?

3. ‘55 Chevy: Your bowtie is rebadging Daewoos around the world…your thoughts?

4. ‘64 Impala: These past forty years have not been good to you. Sorry to bring you the news, but nobody else will. And its time for you to stand up and do something about it!

5. Chrysler 300: now you are part German and fading fast. And the only thing more beancounted than your interior is Cerberus’ management of your company. Thoughts?

6. Accord: You used to be small and super efficient, now you can fit in the trunk of your successor. Cool, huh?

7. Camry: It was always an uphill battle for you, but now you rule the world. This just proves that if you stick to your guns you will succeed. Good for you! (applause)

8. Buick Electra: Hey, I mean you’re totally popular in China. Sometimes its okay to feel like David Hasselhoff. You can overcome this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv157ZIInUk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCIF6JF1O5U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I0WfnhVs2s

I just can’t get enough lampooning of the whole “Import Tuner” and “Urban Street Cred” phenomena…:-D…

This isn’t the kind of campaign which by itself moves the metal. It is a corporate image campaign which then needs to be supported by more make-you-buy advertising.

It also signals a shift away from trying to market to the young, cool hipsters, which demographic often doesn’t have the money for new cars anyway.

I found a cute “making of Max” short on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhIYJs_acEc

Yeah that would piss me off. My Cabrio may be on it’s second tranny. Not sure. If it is then the 5 speed was done at some point before my ownership. Judging on a number of other maintenance items I think the two POs weren’t kind to the car.

There just isn’t much excuse for something major like a transmission or engine to fail in 2008. We’ve had a rear axle fail in a Dakota, a 5 speed in a Chevy, a rear axle in a Camaro, and a tranny in a Chrysler minivan, CVT tranny on it’s last legs in a Saturn Vue at 80K miles. These are in the immediate extended family. Mostly domestic cars in the extended family. Many more vehicles domestic and import doing just fine.

There is a one year old Jetta in the family now, purchased new. Am anxiously tracking how it lasts under the guidance and care of my sister-in-law who is firmly in the turn the key and just go camp.

It sure has the look and feel of their ’60s ads.

Yes electricals are a weak point for them. So far though my car’s problems have been simple. So simple I wonder why the even come up consistently enough that I can find other people with the same problems on the web.

My OEM stereo finally quit. The volume knob potentiometer has worn out after 10 years. The display is also going bad or I’d consider fixing the OEM radio. Replaced it with an “obsolete” Balupunkt Bahamas stereo. Because of the brand it plugged right into my existing harness.

My cruise control has died too. Actually that was going out the day I bought the car (at 102K miles). It would work and then quit. Worked just fine for 100K miles except somebody picked a relay that wasn’t up to the job. If that relay had been a generic on the fuseblock relay then all would have been easy. Unfortunately for the owner it is instead part of a module and soldered to a circuit board hidden in a little aluminum can. The module itself takes about 30 mins to replace. The module costs $240 though at the dealer. I left mine broken for the past 50K miles. If I could have purchased the right relay the fix would have been $10 and my time. Unfortunately even scouring the Digi-Key catalog I could not settle on the right relay. Instead I’ll be sending my module to a repair service called AutoECU and getting it fixed for a flat $75.

Okay next comes the ignition switch. The car is magnitudes more complicated than the early 70s Beetles but the 1997 ignition switch is almost the same design as the 1972 switch I replaced once a long time ago. Dumb. It needs to be uprated to something more substantial or the materials need to be uprated. The soft nylon eventually wears so that the aluminum tab that connects it to the ignition lock quits rotating it far enough. In my case though heat from the current passing through it distorted the switch until it was junk. $14 from NAPA. Takes hours of frustration the first time you take it apart and about 15 mins any future times. The problem is that the factory manual procedure requires VW only tools that I couldn’t get locally.

Then, I found a grassroots procedure on VWVortex that takes no time at all. Instead of pulling a pressed on bearing race at the top of the steering column per VW, just lossen the u-joint between the pedals per VWVortex and remove the entire shaft. If I can get 100K between replacements I’ll be satisfied. Honestly EVERY VW I have owned and a few more that I work on for friends have this same problem. MY CR-V also had a recall for it’s ignition switch at 40K miles. At 158K miles it is still working fine. I won’t dare left the dealer screw up my vehicle.

Two remaining problems. The first is a dirty throttle body with auotmatic idle speed control. Took me alot of head scratching to figure that out. Only occasionally comes up when idling on a very hot day, never with the a/c on the car almost stalls. Increase the idle speed by 300 rpm with your foot for 5 seconds and the problem goes away. Need to diassemble it and clean it.

Last problem is an airbag light that is on constantly now. Maybe it wants to be inspected and reset by the dealer or maybe there is a real problem. I don’t know. Don’t really care much either b/c airbags should be optional on a car to me anyhow. I’ll eventually get around to checking into it. Prob sooner than later.

Like a previous poster mentioned buy a Ross-tech OBDII scanner and you’ll pay for it in about one or two trips to the dealer. The local Chevy dealer charged my grandfather $65 to tell him what I had already figured out. Bad EGR valve on his Lumina but I did not have a scanner to prove it.

There are other gadgets available to scan codes but few really are as detailed as the Ross-tech. I have seen a couple others. I also recommend looking into Freediag

http://freediag.sourceforge.net/

Yeah, that’s right a free OBD scanner. Some assembly required.

In fact, to be stereotypical about it, who do you trust more with computers and fancy electronics-the Japanese or the Germans? The more that cars become less an engineering feat of engines and transmissions and more a computer on wheels, the more the Germans will fall behind, reliability-wise, to the Japanese.

That’s the answer. Maybe one could argue that VW is more reliabile than the domestics (although the trend for VW is down and the trend for the domestics is definitely up), but the Japanese beats both so who cares.

These new ads, an old car interviewing old ass people, is completely alienating. VW is just trying to hard to be hip.

Are we counting interior trim on one brand vs transmissions on another brand as 1 black mark each?

Just curious…

Most of the domestics I know have had big things fail like engines, transmissions, axles, a/c compressors, etc.

(Best Robert DeNiro Impression) You talking to me….?

I thought the Toyota advert summed up the car nicely. VW adverts are still playing on the “reliability” angle despite evidence suggesting that maybe their reliability isn’t as good as they think….