How do VW (and Audi) do it?

[Momentofmadness]

daemon said:

Uh huh. An advertising campaign from over 20 years ago.

Please keep up at the back

But to answer the OP that's how the brand was established

[daemon]

Momentofmadness said:

daemon said:

Uh huh. An advertising campaign from over 20 years ago.

Please keep up at the back

But to answer the OP that's how the brand was established

Thats not what the O/P asked. He asked "so guys how come their image just goes from strength to strength with jo public?"

Please read the thread fully before extracting one or two random posts and linking them together.

[Willy Nilly]

daemon said:

Momentofmadness said:

daemon said:

Uh huh. An advertising campaign from over 20 years ago.

Please keep up at the back

But to answer the OP that's how the brand was established

Thats not what the O/P asked. He asked "so guys how come their image just goes from strength to strength with jo public?"

Please read the thread fully before extracting one or two random posts and linking them together.

because they keep drip, drip, dripping away at about how great their cars are.

[Riskins]

Owned an '07 Golf GT Sport 170ps ( yes the one with the alleged injector and DPF issues) from 18mths old, bought it from a dealer with 20k miles on it.

Covered another 90k miles in it and have to say it was absolutely fantastic without a single issue, and I drove it hard up and down the motorways. Appreciate I may have been lucky but this was the. Replaced with a brand new Leon FR which was the same basic car albeit moved onto the newer Common Rail Diesel engine and again the VAG car failed to disappoint with 70k miles issue free.

Now driving a BMW 320d and 30k miles in and again not a single issue to date, still not he original tyres albeit they are almost ready for a change.

So in nearly 200k miles I have failed to experience any issues from these cars, I know I am mechanically sympathetic but still like to enjoy my driving and these marques seem to have been ultra reliable and enjoyable to drive.

[Grandfondo]

Willy Nilly said:

daemon said:

Momentofmadness said:

daemon said:

Uh huh. An advertising campaign from over 20 years ago.

Please keep up at the back

But to answer the OP that's how the brand was established

Thats not what the O/P asked. He asked "so guys how come their image just goes from strength to strength with jo public?"

Please read the thread fully before extracting one or two random posts and linking them together.

because they keep drip, drip, dripping away at about how great their cars are.

Vorsprung durch turnip as the oirish say!

[0a]

AnotherClarkey said:

A colleague of mine has a Y-reg petrol Golf and it is an absolute sack of st. Often breaks down, most electrical items have issues, interior is falling apart etc. etc. Costs him a fortune but 'why get rid of it, it is a quality German car' is his attitude.

Back in the day a friend purchased a golf of this era - I think this was where it all went wrong. I remember winding down the window and the glass fell out into the door. Utter junk (though it did have nice coloured dials if I remember correctly).

[Vince70]

All I can do is base on experience..

I've got a 19 year old A4 which still runs as good as new and is totally rust free also I have a 22 year old audi which is the same.

My father recently sold his old 20 year old A6 which never gave him a single problem and was replaced by a 14 year old mkIV golf which still looks and drives like a new car (and the doors do have a lovely clunk when closing lol)

The A6 was bought as a stop gap after his 4 year old Renault had problem after problem.

I had the thing for awhile and even things like the seat bolsters fell apart and most of the time things like the heater windows etc would pack up on a regular basis and would only drive in permanent safe mode.

It was hit or miss if the Renault would start it ended up scrap before it was 5 years old as I wouldn't of dared sell it to anyone.

I can honestly say I've never had an issue with any VAG product over the years and I find service items are ridiculously cheap if you shop about.

But then again the newest VAG product in our family is 14 years old so I can't vouch for the new stuff but once the A5 is down to less than a grand and about 20 years old I will buy one lol

[Toaster Pilot]

I've recently acquired a 1999 A6 that's a whisker off 200k miles. It drives like a far younger car, feels utterly solid and dependable.

Had its fair share of repairs in its time but few 200k mile cars won't have, especially turbocharged petrol engined ones.

[Horse Pop]

Honestly, I put it down to a combination of:
1) They are very good at engineering nicely solid feeling interiors on p average shopping cars.
2) They have an air of comfy middle-class-ness that appeals to Brits.

[snapdragon69]

A long time ago now (in the late 1990s), but after hosing thosands into an old BMW keeping it as perfect as it deserved to stay, I decided to be sensible and bought a MAZDA 626 GLXi. Worst car I have ever had in virtually every way. Prices of parts were worse than Bentley. e.g. Electric aerial (special fit) £249. Anti-roll bar links £53 each. It was built like a caravan, everything thin and lightweight and had terrible design faults such as handbrakes seize on every day and the crappy Mitsubishi calipers were £279 each! Dealers were just shockingly bad.

[V8RX7]

snapdragon69 said:

A long time ago now (in the late 1990s), but after hosing thosands into an old BMW keeping it as perfect as it deserved to stay, I decided to be sensible and bought a MAZDA 626 GLXi. Worst car I have ever had in virtually every way. Prices of parts were worse than Bentley. e.g. Electric aerial (special fit) £249. Anti-roll bar links £53 each. It was built like a caravan, everything thin and lightweight and had terrible design faults such as handbrakes seize on every day and the crappy Mitsubishi calipers were £279 each! Dealers were just shockingly bad.

You must be the only one.

Whilst I'll agree some jap parts can be expensive - Mazdas only real problem is with rust and some diesel engines.

My wife had a late 90's 626 for yrs and it never went wrong.

Now has a Mazda6 - again no problems.

I took it for it's MOT and on collection I asked were there any advisories - the mech said "Of course not, it's a Mazda"

[Crafty_]

gvij said:

VW/ Audi are well made cars, end of.

gvij said:

Their cars are superbly engineered, have great fit and finish as well as neat design touches.

VAG encompasses VW, Audi, Seat, Skoda, Lamborghini, Bugatti . They are constantly rolling out new highly desirable models with new engines and technologies to satisfy human non fidelity so they cant perfect anything perfectly as they are doing so much. Same at their suppliers. I think they are an amazing company, way ahead of Daimler , BMW, Toyota, Ford, GM , Renault , Mazda etc

A mate is an Audi technician. He'd of agreed with you 12-14 years ago. Not now.
He got sick of the brand he was with previously for common faults and the like so went to Audi. Bit of a revelation - no engines in bits, no silly ancillary failures (coil packs, EGR etc).

We meet up every so often and he relates the latest tales of woe, to be honest he's just really disappointed. Anyway, in the last 6 months he's had to deal with:

Multiple 2.0 TFSI engines with worn piston rings at 30k miles. Causes so much damage the engine is scrapped.
Multiple A1s with stretched cam chains
Multiple Q7s with leaking or burst shocks at 2/3 years old
Brand new A4 that dropped a valve at 160 miles
Brand new A3 with a coolant/steam leak. Caused by a radiator hose not secured with a clip (clip was there, just not on the hose!).
Brand new A4 with weird electrical maladies. Caused by multiple earth points not secured properly (simply, the nut not done up).
Had cause to drop a headlining on a new car to trace an electrical issue, found that grab handles are now secured with plastic "suicide" clips rather than bolts, making it impossible to remove without causing damage.

All the usual stuff - flywheels, EGR, injectors, numerous electrical issues, control units failing - quite often from water leaks. Poorly terminated wires in harnesses etc.

His verdict is that they aren't the car you think they are.

These aren't the highlights, just the typically daily problems. Granted, he sees the problem cars and not the problem free ones (unless in for a service) but some of this is just simple engineering - engineers don't rule the roost anymore, the bean counters do - hence poor engineering like the piston rings. The really interesting bit is we have a mutual friend who works for a Vauxhall dealer, they get talking and it soon emerges that whilst Vauxhall do have their problems they rarely have engines in bits nowadays, yet the Audis are. This is not what the stereotypical views of the two brands would suggest!

I also read about Mk6 Golfs and their cam chain tensioner faiilures - have a read : http://www.golfgtiforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=2520...
TL;DR is poorly designed part causes the valves to get friendly with pistons, new engine needed. No recall, VAG have re-designed the part. these guys are taking their cars to a dealer who tries to charge £xxxx's for repair, the owner or dealer gets VW customer service involved and the owner ends up paying a grand or so - it would seem most are happy about this! I don't get it, why should the owner pay anything ?


VAG aren't alone in trying to be too clever though. All manufacturers are adding more and more technology and complexity, typically this is at the cost of reliability or cheap repair. the use of proprietary protocols/hardware & software means inevitably its only main dealers who can afford to have the tools to correctly diagnose and repair faults.
The aforementioned friend told me about a car bought by a trader cheap at auction, the car had a non functioning phone kit. £2000 later it was working again. On a 4/5 year old car that was a very expensive fix.
We're fast getting to the point that cars simply won't last 10 years and owning anything out of warranty will be a complete liability. Of course this works in the manufacturers favour which means they are even less likely to do anything about it.

[ch108]

V8RX7 said:

snapdragon69 said:

A long time ago now (in the late 1990s), but after hosing thosands into an old BMW keeping it as perfect as it deserved to stay, I decided to be sensible and bought a MAZDA 626 GLXi. Worst car I have ever had in virtually every way. Prices of parts were worse than Bentley. e.g. Electric aerial (special fit) £249. Anti-roll bar links £53 each. It was built like a caravan, everything thin and lightweight and had terrible design faults such as handbrakes seize on every day and the crappy Mitsubishi calipers were £279 each! Dealers were just shockingly bad.

You must be the only one.

Whilst I'll agree some jap parts can be expensive - Mazdas only real problem is with rust and some diesel engines.

My wife had a late 90's 626 for yrs and it never went wrong.

Now has a Mazda6 - again no problems.

I took it for it's MOT and on collection I asked were there any advisories - the mech said "Of course not, it's a Mazda"

A colleague of mine had a company car, a Mazda 6. Was never out the garage with various problems over a 2year period. He also had constant flat battery after car was left overnight. It was eventually traced to a faulty stereo which wasn't actually switching off and still draining power after the ignition was turned off. Really strange problem.

Yet the other company cars, 2 VW Passats and a Skoda Octavia ran with no issues. I've never owned a VAG car but have worked with companies who seemed to favour these cars as company cars. Regularly drove a Polo, Golf, Passat, Audi A6 and I don't remember any of them having major issues. Although I would my experience of VAG cars was a few years ago, not the most up to date models.

Edited by ch108 on Sunday 26th January 22:32

[Pan Pan]

I have had several Passats and would have to say that one at least, was not very good in terms
of reliability. But in the past had Sciroccos, where the only failures after doing starship mileages in both, with only small items like a head light bulbs failing (other than problems caused by dealership mechanics which is another story)
Not so impressed by my current Passat, which is a 1.6 Bluemotion diesel, because it is not as good on fuel consumption as my earlier 2.0 litre, with the added downside of being just adequate in terms of general performance when driving `normally' (whatever that is) , but is found to be seriously wanting
when I need `press on' also irritating changes to the electrical systems make it not such a pleasant car to use.

[GrizzlyBear]

It is all about perceived quality, make the interiors feel a certain way, switch gear has a solid feel. Design the car to look solid. The actual Engineering is almost irrelevant. They want people to think of them as a prestige brand so market and price accordingly.

And of course they have managed to convince loads of middle class wannabe’s that they simply must have a Golf just as much as their sprogs need riding lessons! Same reason the Mk3 GTi was not a good GTi; it didn't matter people just wanted the image.

[ouch]

Having lived with old volkswagens for 20 years, my impression is that (for the older cars at least) VW weren't trying to be clever. Simple things like dash switches, were simple. Thus they worked, and lasted forever. The technology was old and proven, even things like the body panel and structural items, were relatively simple, especially when I compare it to a BMW of the same era.

Today simple doesn't sell cars, thus we have problems.