WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
I will never own a Volkswagen in my life
Me too, nor any of their related companies.
A decade or so back we decided to move from gas-guzzling performance cars to Eco cars (along with taking significant steps to reduce energy and non-renewables in the home and the rest of our life), and we currently have 2x VW BlueMotion (their badge for Eco, over here) and a Seat (which is mostly VW parts, and also subject to recall [slightly surprising to me as that engine DOES have a Diesel fuel additive tank])
We have had recall letters for all three vehicles - the Seat promptly, the Golf letters (nor any form of communication) did not arrive for months (might even have been a year) after the news broke. No apology, nothing. The letters only tell us that they are working on a solution, there is, still, no date for when that might be.
When the bank we had been with, for several generations!, started being fined $billions for misconduct we moved. Turned out to be the right thing, they have been repeated fined $billions since and the company's behaviour was clearly rotten throughout. Similarly I have no faith that the culture in VW may not be the same - what if it turns out that, example, VW have also been lying about safety features ... No thanks, not in my lifetime.
The original Blue Motion Golf we had I could hypermile, if I concentrated hard, to about 70 MPG; I was chuffed with that. The new one I struggle to get much more than 50MPG, and 60MPG is a challenge. We stupidly just bought "another one the same" from the dealership without any research. Some of the frugal features have been removed in the new model, the salesman persuaded us to have the smartest looking wheels even though he knew our purchase was solely Eco-driven (at the time I had no idea that wheel size would effect range), rolling resistant tyres no longer offered, cruise control has changed from "Manual" to ACC with "charge up behind and jump on the brakes" behaviour [dreadful from an Eco perspective, let alone the fact that it terrifies the passengers!] and so on
Meanwhile I'm left with three VW vehicles (well, we now also have a Tesla on the drive but the fate of the VW it replaces is undecided). If I could have my way all three of them would have gone by now, but I don't have funds to bail out of finance contracts, nor to sell "early" and take the depreciation hit, plus no compensation from VW to offset that loss.
Roll on Model 3 ...