Even though I haven't or never would put myself through the torture of owning a VW, my brother is on his 6th in 20+ years. Once I realized people seemed to be having so much trouble with them, anyone I'd know or run into, I'd ask about their experiences with VWs. When I started doing this about 15 years ago, there weren't a whole lot of owners. There had to be a pretty good reason VW went from selling over 500,000 in 1970 to about 80,000 in 1990. My experience I found was about 4 of 5 VW owners, after some length of ownership, were quite vocal in there negative ownership experiences.
Three of the latest examples are a girl at work had a '98 Golf break a timing belt at 56,000mi(60K is the book interval). By the time I talked to her about it, she had learned the hard way(all $3000 of them) that German engineering doesn't mean reliabilty.
Another girl I know with a '99 Cabriolet had to put $400 into an exhaust system a year ago. Her drive to work is 10 miles each way, so the majority of her driving should clear the pipes. I never heard of anyone having to replace exhaust components with moderate miles these days. But then again, it's a VW.
Another guy I know bought a 4motion Passat. After nearly 300,000 miles and satisfying ownership of a 1988 Cherokee, he's sure ragging about all the money his VW is costing him.
As for my brother, I'd say at best, VWs cost him about 3 times more to own and operate than all the typical American cars in the family. Compared to some, it would be about 5 times more. He's the only one in the family where he'd go through periods of month after month having the car 'nickle and dime' him - to the tune of $200+ for little crap stuff.
Reading his VW magazines, I was able to tell him that his '86 GTI was showing the symptoms of the close ratio 5 speeds failing from the factory mistake of forgetting to add a C-clip to a part in the internals. He traded it in to let it be someone else's problem.
Then he bought a '90 GTI. Less than a year - new muffler. Less than another year dealer puts on another one. About a year later that one failed then he went to a muffler shop and he didn't have to worry about mufflers for a long time.
Same with the radio. Reception wouldn't come in. Went to dealer about 3 or 4 times. They kept on replacing the attenna and who knows what else. After years of no am/fm radio, my brother finally put in an aftermarket Sony head unit. He had a radio from there on.
Whenever it rained the cars' drive belts would always be squealing. Somehow after several trips and about a year and a half going to the dealer, they did something and it wasn't a problem again.
As far as refinement, some things about them have been a bit better, some not as good. His current 2001 VR6 GTI, I would say is less refined and satisfying than my '02 Touring PT Cruiser, though most things are extremely similar. The PTs higher center of gravity makes you feel the tug under extreme cornering. When you throw the GTI into a corner, the suspension initially flops over in an extremely unrefined manner, but then quickly takes a set. I also confirmed this by driving straight and turning the wheel quickly, side by side a few inches. The cars' body would bounce from side to side instead of just sort of tracking in a 'slithering' type of motion. My dad's '97 Caravan put it to shame in refinement in that respect, not to mention my PT.
When taking both cars on a tight clover leaf, I could get them to nearly the same speed, with again the GTIs lower center of gravity being the biggest apparent difference. Of course I can put a Lazy Boy chair with all doors closed in a PT so there is a trade-off. Plus the PT is more refined over bumps and undulations
The only thing that stood above my PT was under hard braking, his GTI does not dive in the slightest amount. As hard as my PT can brake(tests have shown 183 feet from 70-0mph), it does take a slight forward set, though progressively, under hard braking.
The GTI shifter is slightly sloppy and definitely vague. For a car these days that's supposed to be a lot about refinement and feel(it's German remember?), it's quite bad. Really no better than the shifter in the '88 Sunbird turbo I had. Quite amazing.
Surprising too, is he has the optional stereo system and it has nothing on the base system in my PT. I think when I was looking on-line it was about a $400+ option.
I did an oil change for him 2 weeks ago. I won't blame VW, as he bought it used at a Nissan dealership, but the oil plug was hard to loosen. When it did loosen you could tell it didn't feel right coming out. I took it slow, running it back and forth to try and get it to hopefully realign or something. When it came out there was one, nice big sliver of thread from the aluminum pan. At least it looked better than it felt.
I told him to get mobil 1 EP. And after the next change do yearly changes, maybe longer. I'll put in some lube control about every 1000 miles too. The whole point, is the less that plug comes out, the better chance it will be to save him from a ~$500 repair. Here we go again.
