jbtl

I cant believe that I didnt see this thread earlier, I have to throw my two cents in.

I am the proud owner of a 2004 passat wagon (it is chipped, lowered with eibach sport springs, and has A4 "sport" five spoke wheels)

I am also the proud owner of a 2006 TL navi. no mods.

They are both exceptionally good cars and while VW has had thier problems mine has been perfect for 30k miles. That is better than any other car I have ever owned except a 98 civic that went 40k with not a problem before I sold it. I owned a 2002 passat before the acura and it did suffer from the coil pack issue and a water pump failure, it caused me some problems but ultimately it was taken care of and it wasnt enough to keep me from buying another. And by the way I am not oblivious to the problems either of these cars, I have been lurking here for years and have been a member of Club B5 for years.

I just want all you guys who are on here slamming the passat or comparing pre-06 passats to TL's you are comparing apples and oranges, As I drive them both everyday I can say with good athority that they are very different cars, and believe it or not the passat betters the TL in many ways, But compared to my passat the TL is a bigger, more expensive, more powerfull car. It doesnt mean that it is better however, its just different. My passat is ALIVE and fun, it looks great and is built like a tank, My TL has lots of features and is quiet and smooth but lacks the fun and the subjective build quality of the VW.

Flame me all you want but I have both in my garage and I think they are both great cars, thats why I bought them!

ttliang

good luck with your VW bro. that's all i have to say.

jbtl

Between my two passats I have racked up over 100k miles, as I said I have been a member of Club B5 for over 5 years. I know what problems to expect and what problems are blown out of proportion. Look at consumer reports data on the passat, average to good reliability on the B5 depending on model year. Im not worried. I am telling all of you that while the passat has its problems, they are being blown out of proportion on this thread (I am not talking to you Brettg, you clearly had a bad experience). Just like all the TL threads that make the TL look like a piece of junk, It is not, people just tend to end up here when they have problems.

jbtl

I am going to clarify one thing from my last post, I went to consumer reports and looked up the passat, the reliability data shows that it is about 10% below average in its class (4 cyl.) While this is not a good thing it is still pretty damn reliable. Looking at all the charts there are some cars that are SIGNIFICANTLY worse than average ....MB SL...-122%, Nissan quest....-133%, infinity qx56...-297% Those are significant numbers. However, almost any modern car will most likely give you years of dependable service. I just dont see relative reliability on a modern car as a deal breaker. It is a consideration yes, it is one of the considerations that led me to buy a TL, but it shouldnt drive you away from a specific model unless it is relatively VERY bad. The TL is very good, the passat is fairly average, either way odds are that you dont have much to worry about.

Now that said, to address the original poster, it is always a risk to buy a new model, as you will see even on this site, early build problems are common to all brands and VW has not been very good in this respect. It doesnt mean you shouldnt be an early adopter, it just means that you should have realistic expectations

Brettg

You guys over the clubb5 having 2003 passat fuel pump crapouts?
On the vortex, its up to 31 people that have had the pump wear out on their 2003
cars, some at as low as 17,000 miles.
Mine went at 27,000 miles.
Water in the transmission ecu, high oil use, oil leaks, sap pump failures, abs ecu's failing, ignition control mod failures, front suspension wearing out, water pump failures, 1.8t oil sludge problems, coil pack problems, the list goes on and on.
Then the B6 comes out, an all new design, new motor, new transmission, new body, and its going to be great?
I dont think so.

I love The B5.5, my glx was fantastic, but it was the biggest piece of crap new or used I EVER had.

Brett

ttliang

maybe i understand you like ur VW. it's just that every time at work people talked about their VWs current or past, people chimed in about all their VW bad things big and small beside things u've already heard here from few people. it's like a mini town meeting. these are people i know talking about "their" cars. not just some VW hater websites with people you've never met before. going to dealers to get ur cars fixed not for rattles or small stuff rather for things like you mentioned (pumps, electrical problems..etc.) is not fun for people who need to be at work everyday before 9am.

on the other hand, most people at work said good things about their Hondas. i didn't pay them say things like that. i've owned many honda cars and motorcycles for the past 18yrs. nothing happened other than schedule maintenances before 120K+, car wise(after that were few old pumps here and there that's about it. oh i did get hit by that last gen. TL transmission recall which they replaced at no cost.). so buying VW to me is like......do you feel lucky today?

kennyc

so you are stating a fact that VW's reliability is below average, but one can do a lot worse?

jbtl

yeah, it is a pain, i agree completely, in the 4 years that I had a 2002 passat it was a pain multiple times, I am only saying that the positive outweighed the negative by far and I bought another one and that in the last two years it has been perfect. I understand what you are saying about what you hear at work and I have heard similar things, both positive and negative as well, I run a business that in part sells auto parts so cars and broken cars is what I hear about all day. Im not pretending to be an expert, but I can tell you what parts fail on what cars simply by what sells. All cars have weak spots, and with a large enough sample they all come to light. The VW Passat is a well designed car with hit and miss execution, a product of suppliers squeezed by price pressures resulting in varried quality (coil packs are a perfect example). I contrast that with my 2000 chevy P.U. which had poor design and decent exicution, not many failures, just lots of crappy parts that werent put together or designed right the first time. The passat was a far superior car but reliability was similar.

jbtl

uummmm.....yes, its not really that one can do alot worse, its that 10% below average does not make a car unreliable and should not scare a prospective buyer away. Its far better than the vehicle that you are likely replacing anyway.


when the average car now days has about 1 problem per 100 vehicles in the first year of ownership (feel free to correct this as it is only what I remember from some recent reading) 1.1 problems per 100 isnt a big deal, now the TL however was about 40% better than average, sweet! SO......the passat will have about twice as many problems as the TL but 1/3 as many as an infinity qx56. I just dont think that 1.1 problems is that big of a deal, thats all

jbtl

as I said, I wasnt talking to you, you clearly got screwed, I think you managed to get just about every known B5 problem one could have, my condolances.

Yours was a GLX though right, While I have been defending the 4 cyl passat I wont do the same for the V6, 88% below average on the same charts that I quoted above, almost twice as likely to have a problem than average.....thats where I start to draw the line.

kennyc

Positive outweighed the negative? by who's standard?

Honestly, as a comsumer I don't think that's my business. Everyone wants the best bang for his bucks and the bottom line is, passat's reliability is hit or miss.

You did not just compare your passat to your chevy pick-up relibility-wise, did you?

As a lot of us have posted, we ALL love our Audi's/VW's, we ALL praised their handling attributes, but MOST of us do have some problems ranging from minor to serious during our ownership, which turns into not-so-pleasant experiences for MOST of us.

I am glad you have no problems with your current passat, but it only has 30k on the odo. Based from what you've said, your 2002 passat had the coilpack issue and the failed waterpump before 70k. That's not a good thing.

jbtl

by the way, I had to respond to your second point about hondas being reliable, I agree completely, if you look back at my earlier post I mentioned that I had a 98 civic, in 40K miles it was nothing but perfect, it didnt break, it always started on the first crank, it didnt make a funny noise, it didnt scratch, the interior didnt wear. The day I sold it it looked and ran exactly like the day I bought it. One of the considerations in buying my TL was honda reliability, I dont disagree with you at all. Even with my work experiences I can tell you that the ONLY thing that goes bad consistantly on a honda before 200k miles is the CV joints.

jbtl

the way I wrote it is that the positives outweighed the negatives based on MY experience. If I had Brettg's experience, believe me things would have been different.

The chevy was reliable in that it started and ran, never a major mechanical problem. At one point I took it into the dealer to address 7, yes 7 different issues. 4 got fixed and on the other 3 I was told that it was opperating as designed. As bad as the VW dealership can be at least they didnt acuse me of imagining problems. I have to admit though that I had fairly low expectations of that vehicle and it met my expectations.

As a side note, ALL 2002 passat 1.8t were affected by the coil pack issues, it is not an issue on later cars

kennyc

Well said!

jbtl

I guess that the main thing that i am trying to get across is that in designing and building a car a builder must make comprimises. For $25k you cant have everything, VW has chosen performance, materials, and design over ultamate reliability. Toyota has chosen ultimate reliability at the cost of performance and design, In the case of my chevy truck, uttility, ruggedness, and size were chosen over quality materials and detailed execution. In the case of the Tl, it costs more so less comprimise has to be made in the name of $$$

I guess its just that I dont see it as "this car is crappy and this car is awsome" I see all cars as a series of comprimises, which set of them fits you best is up to you.

Agreed?

jbtl

by the way kennyc, nice tl...looks familiar....

kennyc

HEHE!! Thanks!! your's look nice too!

mio

Guys, please give me some suggestions on this: https://acurazine.com/forums/showthr...4&page=1&pp=25

J Emerson

I've had two VW Jettas, a 2000 VR6 and the old GLI 16V. My take on VW is that they generally are strong running and fun cars, but the materials used in the interior fall apart. My 2000's cup holders, vent controls, seat control level, hinge to the glove box, console cover latch, window motors, etc. all broke in the five years I owned it.

VW: fun driving cars to approximate the "on a rail" feel of the BMW, but ultimately a pain in the butt.

I love my TL w/NAV. Best sound system anywhere, and the materials seem pretty good. A few rattles bug after my first few months, but not too bad a problem.

I'd say Acura over VW by a landslide. I'm over the mystique of teh German performance car (until I can afford a Porsche or BMW 645i)

racezx9

I like to propose one question to everyone, if this was your best friend buying a car and they had to choose between the 2 cars and you know your recommendation would be the final say and it would be your responsibility to ensure they got the best car for their money and your relationship would ruined if you gave the wrong advice. which car would you point to

racezx9

Originally Posted by stangg172004
I have an '05 V8 Treg and i love it! Even if the MFI mpg reading is at 11.4 avg, i love it. Now the only problem is that some people don't want to spend time at the dealer but i don't mind all that much, just as long as its for a good car. My car has some little issues like a loose engine cover that the dealer cant seem to fix and rattles under full throttle, squeaky brakes, and this weird dieing cat noise coming from the rear brakes when they are cold. As saisd above most of the major problems got sorted out for 05 and the 06 will be a lot better. But most of the problems came form the '04 V6, my dealer warned me not to trade down from a V8 to a V6 when i was talking to him about the gas, they said the extra money spent at the pump is well worth avoiding the problems with the V6s.




That's crazy.. how can you put up with it???
I would be livid, I have a QX4 infinity and I just had maintenace done at 60k. miles, outside of oil changes, new tires and brakes I never had anything done and it runs like a timex watch. My Honda S2000 never a issue and it blows the door off an Boxster. My TL not a problem. I had a 98' maxima that I did abosolutely nothing to except oil, brakes(at 50k miles no less), tires and 60k maintenance and at 66k I traded it in and got $6700. I don't understand the I like the car so much that I am willing to get screwed, that just does not make sense. That's why I stick with Japanes cars in general. I don't have enough time to sleep, forget spending it at teh dealer, I rather spend it with my family or doing something enjoyable, like driving my S2000 without having going in to the shop afterwards.

jbtl

this is a good question and I can answer because I have done almost that. A friend saw my passats last year (before I got the acura) and wanted to know how I liked them as she was shopping for a car. She wanted to spend about 25K. I told her the problems that I had had and how they had been addressed, she looked over the cars, we went for a ride, she test drove some other cars, she bought a passat. She said that for the money it was tough to beat. For 25K it is a much more interesting car than a camry or some domestic product. If that works for you good, if that doesnt, thats fine too.

Now for $35k, the TL is REAL hard to beat unless absolute driver involvement is your goal (BMW/G35) but I like my gadgets, and my TL starts (see Car and Driver comparo).

Brettg

For me, the positives ALMOST made me keep the car.
Unless you drive one for a while, you wont know how good the VW cars are
in lots of ways. Not always in raw performance, but lots of other ways, the VW
cars (and likely all German cars) are fantastic cars.

That is why I am still so pissed, I loved that car.

Brett

Peters

I think this comment hits home. I have a 04 5AT and have driven a Passat and Audi numerous times when my wife's car is in for maintenance. They are different cars for sure and the one advantage to VW is that subjective road feel. The TL is bigger, a little softer and more subdued.