I have a 2002 Passat-purchased from Bill Britt VW in Virginia. Everyone @ Bill Britt was fantastic and easy to deal with. Then I moved to WA and have had continuous rude service from the staff @ Chaplins. I love my car but after having to deal with these people I will NEVER buy a VW again. No one ever answers the phone-when you ask service related questions they act as thought you are stupid and that they are too busy for you. You car is NEVER EVER ready when promised. And there are NEVER EVER loaner cars available. Oh and the price quote is NEVER EVER close to the final bill. These people SUCK!!!!!!

I have always liked VW my first was a 1980 Rabbit, it always started and always got me where I wanted to go. Then I upgraded to a 1987 1.8 jetta four door, again I really enjoyed it. I traded it in for a 1993 Passat Diesel, I went through a dealer, huge mistake, Sunwest auto courtenay BC. I Got the 6 month warranty but after 1 month I noticed oil in the coolant, I went back to the dealers because I knew this could mean a blown head gasket, they patted me on the head and said it was all ok, that it was common with these cars.

Down the highway I went, last december in the snow, and sure enough it went.

When I finally brought it back to the dealer, they told me there was no warrenty and handed me a bill for $1000 bucks!

Long story short I only paid 40% but still I should not have had to.

My car? well the waterpump went last week, but I took it to another place to get it fixed. but my beef? how can you claim to have great german engineering and sell with an atitude like that, I know three others in this town that the excact same thing happened to them. I am very furious.

I was very close to buying one of these for $23,250.00 when I stumbled across this board. Are the new VW’s really that bad, or as some say, is it mainly related to the older MkIV models? I think the car looks beautiful and the turbo sounds very cool. I can lease a bmw 325i for the same price for 3 years (20k residual) or get a WRX for a bit more.

Has anyone ever changed the accesory idler pully(for the passat vr6) if so how?

Just to add to the other fun I’ve had with this POS, today I simply went to check the oil and when I tried to stick the dip stick back in, the spout tube had broken half-way down to the oil pan. Gee my lawyer is going to love this. Hmmm, what’s next.

Doug

I am writing to you in order to report a problem I found out .
Last year February 2003 I bought a new car brand VW GOLF IV 1.4 PS 85 Generation. After 5000klm I found out that the engine has comsumed to much oil . I reported the fact to the authorised service here named PAZAROPOULOS and they answered me that all new car engines consume more oil at the first 5000klm ( I add 1,5 lts ) . I did the first service at 15.000klm as it is recommended . The engine oil was changed as usual ( the service took place 31.01.2004 ). After 5 months at 20.06.2004 while I was driving I heard a noise . It was the engine oil runing out. I visited a gaz station immidiately in order to check what it was going on . The salesman told me that he had to add engine oil . Finally 2litres of oil were added .
To sum up I think that the engine oil consumption of my car is over than expected to be.
Does anybody know if this oil consumption is regualar for that type of engine? i think it isnt!! well here in Greece all authorised customer’s services say that it’s regular!
They also told me that the car can consume 1lt/1000klms acoording to the constructor’s standards!! what a joke!! so if my car had consumed 20lts for the 20000klms i’ve done it’s also a regular oil consumption!!this is not a car engine!!
If there is someone else that have faced the same problem with mine please contact with me to the mail showed.

I have read many good reviews and seen places like this with many bad reviews. I Would appreciate any constructive insight and or experiences before i buy. The car has 98,000km on it – GLX version, leather, v6. Test drove it yesterday and it drove well and was comfortable. The dealer is asking $20K canadian. Any thoughts from people who have similar models?
During the test drive we almost ran out of gas and the car started sputtering – it continued to do this after putting $10 in gas in. Was told this was becasue the computer needs to be reset if gas gets too low becasue it was continuing to give a very lean gas-air mix in order to delay the car from running out of gas – is this true or bollocks? any one else had this happen?
many thanks for comments

This is sad. Someone using the name retuas posted a nice flame today, which I deleted from the thread (it didn’t belong there otherwise I would have left it intact, minus the pottymouth parts):

Amusing, and far from an intelligent critique. The really sad part is that it comes from Volkswagen.

Is this where we’re at now? Expletives and personal attacks? Is this how Volkswagen of America chooses to treat free expression? Very nice, retuas, you represent everything about your company that convinced me to invest in this site.

Volkswagen of America has accessed this site 48 times, as of this writing, from their corporate offices. This is the first time I’ve been personally attacked by them.

Thanks for proving what we already knew. VW Sucks.

Has anyone heard of any VW with CLIMATRONIC aircon…. that doesn’t kick in until 2000 revs as a minimum… It automatic.. pressure switch changed no diff… Auto, so driving in low gears to pull in a/c….

Great site! I’ve also had problems with VW – they are detailed here.

There are also details about the two class action lawsuits I’m party to against Volkswagen.