Have you ever "blacklisted" a car manufacturer?
Discussion
A friend recently experienced head gasket failure on his 7 year old Kia at only 80,000 miles and was presented by a 1,600 pound repair bill by the local dealership. Needless to say he is pretty cross about the situation and in fairness part of this is that he was quoted 1,000 pounds for the repair but when he came back to pay, it had gone up 600 pounds but having been quite a big advocate for Hyundai/Kia and after buying this particular car for his wife as their family vehicle and being quite happy with it, he also bought himself a 9 year old Cee’d. He was a Ford guy before and I don’t think that they were without their problems but he has so little faith in Kias now that he says once it is paid off, he’s getting shot of both of them and going back to Ford, as he thinks that Kias are cheaply engineered and can’t be relied upon (not that Ford really make any cars that one would want to buy anymore).
I understand his reaction but at the same time, I was surprised that he went from being quite the Kia fanboy to "I will never buy a Kia again"! Have you ever “blacklisted” a particular car manufacturer and said never again?
Personally, I have owned some reliable and some less reliable (Jeep, MINI, some of my VWs) cars but I wouldn’t have gone so far as to have said never again. I had a few issues with my Subaru but the dealership (T.H. White in Cirencester, who I think are sadly no more) were brilliant and really looked after me, so overall a positive experience despite multiple trips back to the dealership. Likewise, the reliability of my first two VWs (Corrado, mk4 Golf) was less than stellar but I would just avoid those particular models or buy better examples of them in the future rather than bin the brand and to be fair, my last two VWs (Polo, mk7 Golf) have been great! I’m more likely to not consider a brand because their products don’t appeal to me anymore. My first car was a mk3 Astra and it wasn’t a bad car reliability/running costs-wise but it was dynamically quite poor, so I haven’t seriously considered another Vauxhall for the last 20 years but some of their recent models (new Corsa/Astra/Mokka/Insignia Sports Tourer) have looked pretty decent, so I wouldn’t rule one out in the future. Growing up, my dad liked the style, practicality, comfort and value of French cars and we had a string of Peugeots and Citroens, which were all pretty good cars. However, we had one Renault in the early 90s (a Renault 21 Savanna), which was the most unreliable POS that he had ever owned, so he never bought another Renault and I carried that prejudice and have never owned one either but there are some Renaults that I wouldn’t mind owning (5 GTT, Clio, Megane R26 etc) and I always thought the last Megane was a great-looking car for a small hatchback.
My in-laws have a Range Rover Evoque and having owned a series of Toyotas, their ownership experience has been quite poor. It often goes into “limp” mode and the heating stops working intermittently so I would be surprised if they buy another Land Rover after this. Conversely, a friend’s nearly new Hyundai caught fire whilst he was driving it and burned to a crisp (he got out in time) but he replaced it a few months later with…another identical Hyundai, as his reasoning was they’re aware of the potential problem now and it’s not going to happen again is it?
I was actually considering a new/newish Kia (Sorento) as a replacement for our ageing MPV. Would love a Land Rover but not sure if I could live with JLR reliability/running costs. The latest Sorento has a good warranty, looks decent, decent value, well equipped and in my experience recent Kias have seemed like pretty decent quality and have driven well. I was under the impression that they were up there with Toyota/Honda/Mazda for reliability/quality and better than Nissan/most European brands but maybe I’m wrong? I’m a bit of a brand snob, as I worked for a dealership in the early 2000s who had Kia as one of their brands and I thought they were cheap garbage but I’m over those prejudices now.
So, have you ever “blacklisted” a car brand and said never again, whether it be through poor design/engineering, lousy dealership service or reliability?
I understand his reaction but at the same time, I was surprised that he went from being quite the Kia fanboy to "I will never buy a Kia again"! Have you ever “blacklisted” a particular car manufacturer and said never again?
Personally, I have owned some reliable and some less reliable (Jeep, MINI, some of my VWs) cars but I wouldn’t have gone so far as to have said never again. I had a few issues with my Subaru but the dealership (T.H. White in Cirencester, who I think are sadly no more) were brilliant and really looked after me, so overall a positive experience despite multiple trips back to the dealership. Likewise, the reliability of my first two VWs (Corrado, mk4 Golf) was less than stellar but I would just avoid those particular models or buy better examples of them in the future rather than bin the brand and to be fair, my last two VWs (Polo, mk7 Golf) have been great! I’m more likely to not consider a brand because their products don’t appeal to me anymore. My first car was a mk3 Astra and it wasn’t a bad car reliability/running costs-wise but it was dynamically quite poor, so I haven’t seriously considered another Vauxhall for the last 20 years but some of their recent models (new Corsa/Astra/Mokka/Insignia Sports Tourer) have looked pretty decent, so I wouldn’t rule one out in the future. Growing up, my dad liked the style, practicality, comfort and value of French cars and we had a string of Peugeots and Citroens, which were all pretty good cars. However, we had one Renault in the early 90s (a Renault 21 Savanna), which was the most unreliable POS that he had ever owned, so he never bought another Renault and I carried that prejudice and have never owned one either but there are some Renaults that I wouldn’t mind owning (5 GTT, Clio, Megane R26 etc) and I always thought the last Megane was a great-looking car for a small hatchback.
My in-laws have a Range Rover Evoque and having owned a series of Toyotas, their ownership experience has been quite poor. It often goes into “limp” mode and the heating stops working intermittently so I would be surprised if they buy another Land Rover after this. Conversely, a friend’s nearly new Hyundai caught fire whilst he was driving it and burned to a crisp (he got out in time) but he replaced it a few months later with…another identical Hyundai, as his reasoning was they’re aware of the potential problem now and it’s not going to happen again is it?
I was actually considering a new/newish Kia (Sorento) as a replacement for our ageing MPV. Would love a Land Rover but not sure if I could live with JLR reliability/running costs. The latest Sorento has a good warranty, looks decent, decent value, well equipped and in my experience recent Kias have seemed like pretty decent quality and have driven well. I was under the impression that they were up there with Toyota/Honda/Mazda for reliability/quality and better than Nissan/most European brands but maybe I’m wrong? I’m a bit of a brand snob, as I worked for a dealership in the early 2000s who had Kia as one of their brands and I thought they were cheap garbage but I’m over those prejudices now.
So, have you ever “blacklisted” a car brand and said never again, whether it be through poor design/engineering, lousy dealership service or reliability?
I'll never buy another Honda motorcycle again (or one of their cars)
I bought a V4 Honda motorcycle when they'd just been introduced back in the 80's. I'd had a sucession of Honda motorcycles from CB200's through CB400 to CB550 fours
It was a fantastic bike - smooth ballistically quick for the era and didn't handle badly either for something that was a little on the porky side weight wise - it comprehensively shat itself just outside the warranty period - cam shafts decided to flake off their case hardening - blocked the oil pressure relief valve and before I could pull the clutch when the oil pressure light came on it screwed the crank and cam shaft bearings
Despite a full MD service record Honda would not entertain even a good will contribution towards the replacement engine
So I lost a bucket of cash and I promised myself I'd never buy another - 40 years on I've kept that promise*
*The first Fireblade nearly caused me to break it but I stayed strong
I bought a V4 Honda motorcycle when they'd just been introduced back in the 80's. I'd had a sucession of Honda motorcycles from CB200's through CB400 to CB550 fours
It was a fantastic bike - smooth ballistically quick for the era and didn't handle badly either for something that was a little on the porky side weight wise - it comprehensively shat itself just outside the warranty period - cam shafts decided to flake off their case hardening - blocked the oil pressure relief valve and before I could pull the clutch when the oil pressure light came on it screwed the crank and cam shaft bearings
Despite a full MD service record Honda would not entertain even a good will contribution towards the replacement engine
So I lost a bucket of cash and I promised myself I'd never buy another - 40 years on I've kept that promise*
*The first Fireblade nearly caused me to break it but I stayed strong
Yeah Mazda.
In the 18 months I’ve had one, it’s had more faults than every other car I have ever owned added together.
According to a Mazda forum I have joined these are all standard issues that Mazda know about and most of the group have. I’m now waiting for the apparently well know design flaw that means the engines fill with carbon every 30k ish miles and need a full dismantled clean.
The dealer experience has been woeful too, although they are well known dealers who have other brands, so not really specific to Mazda.
In the 18 months I’ve had one, it’s had more faults than every other car I have ever owned added together.
According to a Mazda forum I have joined these are all standard issues that Mazda know about and most of the group have. I’m now waiting for the apparently well know design flaw that means the engines fill with carbon every 30k ish miles and need a full dismantled clean.
The dealer experience has been woeful too, although they are well known dealers who have other brands, so not really specific to Mazda.
BMW. I got a 2011 dealer demo Z4 35iS in 2012. Fortunately the warranty covered most of the things that went wrong but what put me off was the dealer attitude. I checked before buying and the salesman assured me that the fragile type 296 wheels had all been replaced by reinforced ones. I probably got though half a dozen wheels in the time I had it. Great car notwithstanding the faults, generally fixable, but the dealer made the entire brand a no go for me.
Citroen!
28 years ago I bought an approved Citroen ZX. I had very little money and my wife was pregnant. We took a holiday in north Wales in an isolated cottage (yes I know, risky)
We were food shopping and on return to the car it failed to start. Recovery took us back to the cottage and agreed to pick me up with the car the next day and take me to the nearest dealer 80 miles away.
So far so good. The dealer in Swansea said they would check the car and phone me. I was to spend the day wandering around the town. They phoned.
When I went to collect the car they had replaced the starter motor under warranty and said they had to replace the battery too and that was not covered and wanted £150.. I objected but was 80 miles from our cottage and needed to get back.
Long story short. Went through a solicitor and go the battery money back as they had apparently breached the terms of the warranty.
Never touched Citroen since.
28 years ago I bought an approved Citroen ZX. I had very little money and my wife was pregnant. We took a holiday in north Wales in an isolated cottage (yes I know, risky)
We were food shopping and on return to the car it failed to start. Recovery took us back to the cottage and agreed to pick me up with the car the next day and take me to the nearest dealer 80 miles away.
So far so good. The dealer in Swansea said they would check the car and phone me. I was to spend the day wandering around the town. They phoned.
When I went to collect the car they had replaced the starter motor under warranty and said they had to replace the battery too and that was not covered and wanted £150.. I objected but was 80 miles from our cottage and needed to get back.
Long story short. Went through a solicitor and go the battery money back as they had apparently breached the terms of the warranty.
Never touched Citroen since.
white_goodman said:
...whether it be through poor design/engineering...
TVR.I bought a Griffith, thinking that the stories of how crudely engineered they were must be exaggerated. I was wrong: the more familiar I became with the engineering that underpinned it, the more my skin crawled.
I worked for a guy who (allegedly) blacklisted BMW as company cars because BMW (allegedly) tried to strong-arm one of his other businesses out of existence by making it clear to suppliers that BMW would cease dealing with them if they continued to supply the other business. He'd previously banned Alfa Romeos as company cars, because we went through a phase of everyone getting 156's and then killing their engines because nobody checks and tops-up oil on their company car, and because they ate their own Selespeed early paddle-shift gearboxes for fun.
Boycotted Volkswagen back in 2001.
Having had a string of about 7 VWs and experienced reasonably good reliability apart from some small niggles we were happy with the 4 dealers we had dealt with over the years so we had no qualms about having another VW when my wife had fancied a new beetle and all was well when we bought the 2.0 litre and we both enjoyed the novelty of the quirky retro car.
I bought a new Golf 1.8 turbo Mk IV and all was well and we decided to swap her 2.0 Beetle for the 1.8 turbo beetle for a bit more performance which we thought the 2.0 lacked.
The new 1.8 Beetle then developed the dreaded ignition coil issue and so it went in for repair for SIX weeks as this problem affected an enormous amount of VW cars throughout Europe. VW could not find a single ignition coil in all that time and were even stripping coil packs off new cars being shipped to the UK. It was a massive issue and took many weeks to redesign the components and get them out to customers cars. I believe over 850,000 cars were affected.
VW provided us with a Nissan Primera Hire Car for this period as no VWs available by this time and definitely not something commensurate with a sporty 1.8 turbo. I went into print and sent VW UK a couple of firm but polite letters and they could not be less interested in my plight and ignored me and left me to do all the running. Dealers were clueless and nobody ever rang to update me.
Not a great situation to be in. After six weeks our car was returned to us but I had to insist the FOUR coils were changed as a lack of newly design items as they were only offering a single coil. They did this but reluctantly. No compensation, no apology, nothing but total.apathy by VW UK and dealers.
Well I guess you know what's coming next
My Golf 1.8 turbo suffered the same fate soon after we got the 1.8 turbo beetle back. Same apathy from dealers but I guess they were pretty jaded at the whole saga by then. Luckily by now VW were churning out coil packs in sufficient numbers to turn our car round in a couple of days but still left a bad taste and we vowed then never to buy another VW.
Never darkened their doors again in all these years!
Having had a string of about 7 VWs and experienced reasonably good reliability apart from some small niggles we were happy with the 4 dealers we had dealt with over the years so we had no qualms about having another VW when my wife had fancied a new beetle and all was well when we bought the 2.0 litre and we both enjoyed the novelty of the quirky retro car.
I bought a new Golf 1.8 turbo Mk IV and all was well and we decided to swap her 2.0 Beetle for the 1.8 turbo beetle for a bit more performance which we thought the 2.0 lacked.
The new 1.8 Beetle then developed the dreaded ignition coil issue and so it went in for repair for SIX weeks as this problem affected an enormous amount of VW cars throughout Europe. VW could not find a single ignition coil in all that time and were even stripping coil packs off new cars being shipped to the UK. It was a massive issue and took many weeks to redesign the components and get them out to customers cars. I believe over 850,000 cars were affected.
VW provided us with a Nissan Primera Hire Car for this period as no VWs available by this time and definitely not something commensurate with a sporty 1.8 turbo. I went into print and sent VW UK a couple of firm but polite letters and they could not be less interested in my plight and ignored me and left me to do all the running. Dealers were clueless and nobody ever rang to update me.
Not a great situation to be in. After six weeks our car was returned to us but I had to insist the FOUR coils were changed as a lack of newly design items as they were only offering a single coil. They did this but reluctantly. No compensation, no apology, nothing but total.apathy by VW UK and dealers.
Well I guess you know what's coming next
My Golf 1.8 turbo suffered the same fate soon after we got the 1.8 turbo beetle back. Same apathy from dealers but I guess they were pretty jaded at the whole saga by then. Luckily by now VW were churning out coil packs in sufficient numbers to turn our car round in a couple of days but still left a bad taste and we vowed then never to buy another VW.
Never darkened their doors again in all these years!
white_goodman said:
A friend recently experienced head gasket failure on his 7 year old Kia at only 80,000 miles and was presented by a 1,600 pound repair bill by the local dealership. Needless to say he is pretty cross about the situation and in fairness part of this is that he was quoted 1,000 pounds for the repair but when he came back to pay, it had gone up 600 pounds but having been quite a big advocate for Hyundai/Kia and after buying this particular car for his wife as their family vehicle and being quite happy with it, he also bought himself a 9 year old Cee’d. He was a Ford guy before and I don’t think that they were without their problems but he has so little faith in Kias now that he says once it is paid off, he’s getting shot of both of them and going back to Ford, as he thinks that Kias are cheaply engineered and can’t be relied upon (not that Ford really make any cars that one would want to buy anymore).
I understand his reaction but at the same time, I was surprised that he went from being quite the Kia fanboy to "I will never buy a Kia again"! Have you ever “blacklisted” a particular car manufacturer and said never again?
Personally, I have owned some reliable and some less reliable (Jeep, MINI, some of my VWs) cars but I wouldn’t have gone so far as to have said never again. I had a few issues with my Subaru but the dealership (T.H. White in Cirencester, who I think are sadly no more) were brilliant and really looked after me, so overall a positive experience despite multiple trips back to the dealership. Likewise, the reliability of my first two VWs (Corrado, mk4 Golf) was less than stellar but I would just avoid those particular models or buy better examples of them in the future rather than bin the brand and to be fair, my last two VWs (Polo, mk7 Golf) have been great! I’m more likely to not consider a brand because their products don’t appeal to me anymore. My first car was a mk3 Astra and it wasn’t a bad car reliability/running costs-wise but it was dynamically quite poor, so I haven’t seriously considered another Vauxhall for the last 20 years but some of their recent models (new Corsa/Astra/Mokka/Insignia Sports Tourer) have looked pretty decent, so I wouldn’t rule one out in the future. Growing up, my dad liked the style, practicality, comfort and value of French cars and we had a string of Peugeots and Citroens, which were all pretty good cars. However, we had one Renault in the early 90s (a Renault 21 Savanna), which was the most unreliable POS that he had ever owned, so he never bought another Renault and I carried that prejudice and have never owned one either but there are some Renaults that I wouldn’t mind owning (5 GTT, Clio, Megane R26 etc) and I always thought the last Megane was a great-looking car for a small hatchback.
My in-laws have a Range Rover Evoque and having owned a series of Toyotas, their ownership experience has been quite poor. It often goes into “limp” mode and the heating stops working intermittently so I would be surprised if they buy another Land Rover after this. Conversely, a friend’s nearly new Hyundai caught fire whilst he was driving it and burned to a crisp (he got out in time) but he replaced it a few months later with…another identical Hyundai, as his reasoning was they’re aware of the potential problem now and it’s not going to happen again is it?
I was actually considering a new/newish Kia (Sorento) as a replacement for our ageing MPV. Would love a Land Rover but not sure if I could live with JLR reliability/running costs. The latest Sorento has a good warranty, looks decent, decent value, well equipped and in my experience recent Kias have seemed like pretty decent quality and have driven well. I was under the impression that they were up there with Toyota/Honda/Mazda for reliability/quality and better than Nissan/most European brands but maybe I’m wrong? I’m a bit of a brand snob, as I worked for a dealership in the early 2000s who had Kia as one of their brands and I thought they were cheap garbage but I’m over those prejudices now.
So, have you ever “blacklisted” a car brand and said never again, whether it be through poor design/engineering, lousy dealership service or reliability?
Wasn't it covered by warranty? Kia have seven years don't they? My dad's on his third and loves them!! I understand his reaction but at the same time, I was surprised that he went from being quite the Kia fanboy to "I will never buy a Kia again"! Have you ever “blacklisted” a particular car manufacturer and said never again?
Personally, I have owned some reliable and some less reliable (Jeep, MINI, some of my VWs) cars but I wouldn’t have gone so far as to have said never again. I had a few issues with my Subaru but the dealership (T.H. White in Cirencester, who I think are sadly no more) were brilliant and really looked after me, so overall a positive experience despite multiple trips back to the dealership. Likewise, the reliability of my first two VWs (Corrado, mk4 Golf) was less than stellar but I would just avoid those particular models or buy better examples of them in the future rather than bin the brand and to be fair, my last two VWs (Polo, mk7 Golf) have been great! I’m more likely to not consider a brand because their products don’t appeal to me anymore. My first car was a mk3 Astra and it wasn’t a bad car reliability/running costs-wise but it was dynamically quite poor, so I haven’t seriously considered another Vauxhall for the last 20 years but some of their recent models (new Corsa/Astra/Mokka/Insignia Sports Tourer) have looked pretty decent, so I wouldn’t rule one out in the future. Growing up, my dad liked the style, practicality, comfort and value of French cars and we had a string of Peugeots and Citroens, which were all pretty good cars. However, we had one Renault in the early 90s (a Renault 21 Savanna), which was the most unreliable POS that he had ever owned, so he never bought another Renault and I carried that prejudice and have never owned one either but there are some Renaults that I wouldn’t mind owning (5 GTT, Clio, Megane R26 etc) and I always thought the last Megane was a great-looking car for a small hatchback.
My in-laws have a Range Rover Evoque and having owned a series of Toyotas, their ownership experience has been quite poor. It often goes into “limp” mode and the heating stops working intermittently so I would be surprised if they buy another Land Rover after this. Conversely, a friend’s nearly new Hyundai caught fire whilst he was driving it and burned to a crisp (he got out in time) but he replaced it a few months later with…another identical Hyundai, as his reasoning was they’re aware of the potential problem now and it’s not going to happen again is it?
I was actually considering a new/newish Kia (Sorento) as a replacement for our ageing MPV. Would love a Land Rover but not sure if I could live with JLR reliability/running costs. The latest Sorento has a good warranty, looks decent, decent value, well equipped and in my experience recent Kias have seemed like pretty decent quality and have driven well. I was under the impression that they were up there with Toyota/Honda/Mazda for reliability/quality and better than Nissan/most European brands but maybe I’m wrong? I’m a bit of a brand snob, as I worked for a dealership in the early 2000s who had Kia as one of their brands and I thought they were cheap garbage but I’m over those prejudices now.
So, have you ever “blacklisted” a car brand and said never again, whether it be through poor design/engineering, lousy dealership service or reliability?
Down on the Farm said:
The new 1.8 Beetle then developed the dreaded ignition coil issue and so it went in for repair for SIX weeks as this problem affected an enormous amount of VW cars throughout Europe. VW could not find a single ignition coil in all that time and were even stripping coil packs off new cars being shipped to the UK. It was a massive issue and took many weeks to redesign the components and get them out to customers cars. I believe over 850,000 cars were affected.
VW provided us with a Nissan Primera Hire Car for this period as no VWs available by this time and definitely not something commensurate with a sporty 1.8 turbo. I went into print and sent VW UK a couple of firm but polite letters and they could not be less interested in my plight and ignored me and left me to do all the running. Dealers were clueless and nobody ever rang to update me.
Not a great situation to be in. After six weeks our car was returned to us but I had to insist the FOUR coils were changed as a lack of newly design items as they were only offering a single coil. They did this but reluctantly. No compensation, no apology, nothing but total.apathy by VW UK and dealers.
Blimey - SIX weeks! There’s loads of people with cars that have been in garages for 6 months at the moment. My next door neighbour just got his Porsche back after 12 mths - no courtesy car.VW provided us with a Nissan Primera Hire Car for this period as no VWs available by this time and definitely not something commensurate with a sporty 1.8 turbo. I went into print and sent VW UK a couple of firm but polite letters and they could not be less interested in my plight and ignored me and left me to do all the running. Dealers were clueless and nobody ever rang to update me.
Not a great situation to be in. After six weeks our car was returned to us but I had to insist the FOUR coils were changed as a lack of newly design items as they were only offering a single coil. They did this but reluctantly. No compensation, no apology, nothing but total.apathy by VW UK and dealers.
Down on the Farm said:
Boycotted Volkswagen back in 2001.
Having had a string of about 7 VWs and experienced reasonably good reliability apart from some small niggles we were happy with the 4 dealers we had dealt with over the years so we had no qualms about having another VW when my wife had fancied a new beetle and all was well when we bought the 2.0 litre and we both enjoyed the novelty of the quirky retro car.
I bought a new Golf 1.8 turbo Mk IV and all was well and we decided to swap her 2.0 Beetle for the 1.8 turbo beetle for a bit more performance which we thought the 2.0 lacked.
The new 1.8 Beetle then developed the dreaded ignition coil issue and so it went in for repair for SIX weeks as this problem affected an enormous amount of VW cars throughout Europe. VW could not find a single ignition coil in all that time and were even stripping coil packs off new cars being shipped to the UK. It was a massive issue and took many weeks to redesign the components and get them out to customers cars. I believe over 850,000 cars were affected.
VW provided us with a Nissan Primera Hire Car for this period as no VWs available by this time and definitely not something commensurate with a sporty 1.8 turbo. I went into print and sent VW UK a couple of firm but polite letters and they could not be less interested in my plight and ignored me and left me to do all the running. Dealers were clueless and nobody ever rang to update me.
Not a great situation to be in. After six weeks our car was returned to us but I had to insist the FOUR coils were changed as a lack of newly design items as they were only offering a single coil. They did this but reluctantly. No compensation, no apology, nothing but total.apathy by VW UK and dealers.
Well I guess you know what's coming next
My Golf 1.8 turbo suffered the same fate soon after we got the 1.8 turbo beetle back. Same apathy from dealers but I guess they were pretty jaded at the whole saga by then. Luckily by now VW were churning out coil packs in sufficient numbers to turn our car round in a couple of days but still left a bad taste and we vowed then never to buy another VW.
Never darkened their doors again in all these years!
Does that apply to Seat, Skoda and Audi too?Having had a string of about 7 VWs and experienced reasonably good reliability apart from some small niggles we were happy with the 4 dealers we had dealt with over the years so we had no qualms about having another VW when my wife had fancied a new beetle and all was well when we bought the 2.0 litre and we both enjoyed the novelty of the quirky retro car.
I bought a new Golf 1.8 turbo Mk IV and all was well and we decided to swap her 2.0 Beetle for the 1.8 turbo beetle for a bit more performance which we thought the 2.0 lacked.
The new 1.8 Beetle then developed the dreaded ignition coil issue and so it went in for repair for SIX weeks as this problem affected an enormous amount of VW cars throughout Europe. VW could not find a single ignition coil in all that time and were even stripping coil packs off new cars being shipped to the UK. It was a massive issue and took many weeks to redesign the components and get them out to customers cars. I believe over 850,000 cars were affected.
VW provided us with a Nissan Primera Hire Car for this period as no VWs available by this time and definitely not something commensurate with a sporty 1.8 turbo. I went into print and sent VW UK a couple of firm but polite letters and they could not be less interested in my plight and ignored me and left me to do all the running. Dealers were clueless and nobody ever rang to update me.
Not a great situation to be in. After six weeks our car was returned to us but I had to insist the FOUR coils were changed as a lack of newly design items as they were only offering a single coil. They did this but reluctantly. No compensation, no apology, nothing but total.apathy by VW UK and dealers.
Well I guess you know what's coming next
My Golf 1.8 turbo suffered the same fate soon after we got the 1.8 turbo beetle back. Same apathy from dealers but I guess they were pretty jaded at the whole saga by then. Luckily by now VW were churning out coil packs in sufficient numbers to turn our car round in a couple of days but still left a bad taste and we vowed then never to buy another VW.
Never darkened their doors again in all these years!
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