Talk me out of a used Pheaton...
Discussion
Its a heavy car, which means the performance is a little compromised. I have not had any experience with this particular engine in a Phaeton, but my Touareg was a PITA in terms of acceleration and MPG. Better than 3.0TDi though, which simply chews autoboxes as long as you not driving like a granny, and a fair bit more expensive to service. Drive it before making a decision, and you'll immediately feel if it's your thing.
I've ran a 5.0TDi as a company car (VW dealer) and after 100K miles and 2 years it felt as new. The only thing went wrong with it was blown airbox.
I've ran a 5.0TDi as a company car (VW dealer) and after 100K miles and 2 years it felt as new. The only thing went wrong with it was blown airbox.
I've just bought a 4.2 V8, fantastic car if you can live with the 16mpg. There are only around 1700 Phaetons on the road in the UK, most of them diesel. Gorgeous cars to drive.
You'll want to do a VCDS (vag-com) scan on the vehicle to check for any fault codes, pretty much everything on the car links back and reports to one of the ECUs. There are guys advertising on Ebay who will charge you £20 to plug a computer in and print off all the faults.
There are some issues with the paintwork on the aluminium doors but VW are pretty good at honouring the 12 year corrosion warranty (mine is heading in for work on all 4 doors and it's only 5 years old) as long as there's not been any other paintwork/repairs on the doors in question.
These cars are pretty specialised so I'd look for a full VW service history, and even then some of the dealerships struggle to diagnose problems as they see so few of these.
There is a very good forum (not as good as PH obviously) that will give you more information than you'll ever need about Phaetons .... http://forums.vwvortex.com/forumdisplay.php?112
Good luck
Martin
You'll want to do a VCDS (vag-com) scan on the vehicle to check for any fault codes, pretty much everything on the car links back and reports to one of the ECUs. There are guys advertising on Ebay who will charge you £20 to plug a computer in and print off all the faults.
There are some issues with the paintwork on the aluminium doors but VW are pretty good at honouring the 12 year corrosion warranty (mine is heading in for work on all 4 doors and it's only 5 years old) as long as there's not been any other paintwork/repairs on the doors in question.
These cars are pretty specialised so I'd look for a full VW service history, and even then some of the dealerships struggle to diagnose problems as they see so few of these.
There is a very good forum (not as good as PH obviously) that will give you more information than you'll ever need about Phaetons .... http://forums.vwvortex.com/forumdisplay.php?112
Good luck
Martin
Mr Adds said:
Dealer up the road from me has a 05 Pheaton 3.2V6 with 36k on the clock, 1 owner, for £8K, really like the look of these from when they were launched. What should I look out for? Seems to be a few electrical problems but thats all I can find?
Cheers
Buy it. Cheers
They've got to be one of the UK's best used buy bargains. I'd have bought one myself earlier this year if the diesel economy was slightly better. Cannot be much better out there for the money for motorway wafting.
Running costs are supposedly high but I never got that far into investigating.
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