Originally Posted By: Tornado Red
Twelve year, unlimited mileage, anti-corrosion warranty. If your VW rusts through, that body panel will be replaced.
Needless to say, VW does not have to cover very many warranty claims for corrosion.
When will Toyota, Honda, Chevy or Ford begin to offer a warranty like that?
Yes, the car will look good and not rusty in the driveway, where it will sit as some mechanical problem waits to be fixed.
Yes, I've owned a VW (my wife actually, but I had to deal with the problems). It was a 2000 Beetle. All I can say is for a car that was four years old (when we got it) there was a lot of brittle plastic parts and brittle rubber hoses that left me steaming - literally in one case, as the plastic impeller on the water pump shattered, leading to an overheat. I knew it couldn't be just low on coolant, because I had recently checked the overflow bottle, as the coolant low sensor had failed and was lighting the low coolant light on the dash.
Fortunately, I noticed the engine overheat light because my eyes were always drawn to the dash because the check engine light was on due to a rubber vacuum hose on the fuel pressure regulator that had rotted in half. Also, the engine overheat light had changed from blue to red, which also drew my attention. Why was the blue light (indicating the engine is cold) on even as the engine was overheating? Because the coolant temp sender had failed.
Also fortunate was the fact that there was no one behind me, as the brake switch (which had already been recalled and replaced) had failed again, meaning I had no brake lights. (At some point in the future, the 2nd replacement would fail again, while I was in a car wash and the car was in park. This particular car wash has one putting the vehicle in park and a giant conveyor belt rolls the car along. When the switch fails the interlock does not work, and the car cannot be taken out of park. Imagine the concern of the person in the car behind me, when I did not leave the car wash and their car was still rolling down the conveyor belt)
The overheat wasn't a problem though, because the plastic window regulator had also broken and the window could not go up, so I just cranked the heat up to bleed some heat off the engine, but stayed cool due to the inoperative window.
When the coolant was drained from the engine to fix the water pump, I decided to replace the so called 'heart valve', another plastic part which bolts to the block and has several coolant/heater hoses leading in and out. Somehow the plastic and the o-ring were not sealing properly leading to a minor, but continuous coolant leak.
When we sold the vehicle, the happy new owner went to power down the window (which I will admit had been fixed by VW with metal regulators) and the plastic window switch broke off the door. A few weeks later I got a recall notice in the mail that there was a recall on the brake switch that had already been recalled once - a recall on a recall..hahaha...sent the notice to the new owner.
Anyway, that was just a quick tongue in cheek story to show how reliable my VW was. All those problems happened to me, but not at the same time as the story implies. We had the car for just under two years and 40000km. Also, if you search, you will find that these problems were not unique to me - there were lots of other owners with similar problems - how else did I figure out how to fix them?
I will admit that the car was fun to drive, though - handled like a little go-kart.
