Faults:

Transmission's 2nd gear syncronizer broke. Water pump failed. Both door handles broke on the same day!

General Comments:

The car is great looking, good performing, and practical. But, it has not been reliable, with the transmission, water pump and both door handles having to be replaced within 3,000 miles of ownership. But, car has that great coach built German feeling and is a lot of car for the money. repairs and maintainance are expensive, however. Comparable, but better all around than, say, a Porsche 944. Has equal interior quality as my Porsche 968. It's a rare sports car that is admired by all and respected by fellow Volkswagen enthusiasts.

Faults:

The head gasket started leaking at about 60K miles.

The sunroof only tilts. It no longer slides back and forth. This is a typical problem with Corrados.

I had the drivers side door handle break. This also seems to be a typical problem with Corrados.

The A/C compressor failed at about 50K miles.

The cooling fan motor bearing failed which destroyed both the primary and the slave fan.

Recently, I had an electrical short which burned up the electrical wiring going into the instrument cluster. Luckily the cluster was not destroyed.

General Comments:

Overall, I have been very happy with this car. It is definitely fun to drive. As a matter a fact, I find myself driving much faster and more aggressively in this car than in my Cabrio.

My modifications started as soon as the warranty expired. That was when I installed a suspension kit (H&R sport springs, Bilstein Sport shocks, Neuspeed F, R,upper stress bar). The handling is now quite fantastic, but a little harsh. Oversteer is actually possible when entering a corner. Of course understeer takes over with a heavy foot. The only problem with lowering the car is the lowest point is now my oil pan and the front air dam.

The seats are fantastic. I occasionally do 12-13 hr road trips (stopping only for gas) without any discomfort.

This is definitely an enthusiasts car because as can be seen above, reliability is not very good. That surprised my quite a bit. My brother bought a Golf in 1994 (made in Mexico) and the car has been trouble free. The best thing I ever did was get the extended warranty (which luckily covered most of the repair costs.

The weakest point of this car is the cooling system. It is completely inadequate in my opinion. A large motor with a small radiator is a bad combination. You can watch the oil and water temperatures go up when you ascend a hill or speed past 75ish. Normal oil temperatures for me during the summer (100 F temps) are about 250 F and that is with an additional oil cooler installed. The car has never overheated, however.

This car also devour tires. I've tried different brands and compounds, but they all wear out in about 20K miles no matter how I drive the car. I am now finishing my 5th set.

General maintenance has been very low. I recently did my second tune up (plugs, cap, rotor) at 105K miles. The old parts did not look bad at all and the car did not idle or drive bad with the "old" parts.

Even with all the problems, I would never part with the car. It is such a kick-in-the-pants to drive. I still occasionally get comments on the car.

Faults:

Please recall that I am a sportscar enthusiast, and a Volkswagen fanatic as well. I still own my GTI, and do not use my Corrado as daily transportation. I hope that my admission of that fact will show my desire to be objective upon this review.

These cars run at very high coolant temperatures (mine constantly hovers around 230F in slow traffic). I have replaced the thermostat housing, the secondary coolant pump, and the upper radiator elbow.

Even with so much work, I find that the car is still consuming coolant. I suspect that the head gasket is failing. I have learned that the replacement gasket for the VR6 is much better than the original one. I can only suggest that if you are looking to buy an `early' Volkswagen VR6, it may not be a "bad thing" if the head has been off the car.

The passenger side window closes, but will not seal. It stops about 5mm short of the window seal. Investigation (taking the interior skin off) reveals that one of the cable mounts has broken. Per my local independant VW shop, the mount is a `dealer part'. Per my local VW dealer, the part is not available seperately (they wish to have you spend 500 U.S. Dollars upon replacing the entire window unit.

Battery drain! The US market Corrado was not offered without power windows/sunroof/trip computer, etc.

If you do not drive the car often, you will find yourself not being able to drive at all, due to all of the "luxury" garbage. The trip computer (and the previously mentioned auxiliary waterpump, etc.) drain the battery, even when the car has been shut off.

I bought mine as a `collectors' item'. Since I only drive it two or three days a week, I have often found the electrical system dead.

I must admit.. so many "jump starts" have not yet burned out my car's Central Processing Unit.

General Comments:

In my opinion, the VR6 Corrado is the best car Volkswagen has ever produced. In my humble opinion, every modern GTI or Jetta or Passat with a VR6 under the hood owes its existance to VW's little experiment (ten years ago!) shoving such a wonderful motor into an A2 frame.

Fantastic power, great cornering, wonderful brakes! I can only dream about what the car could do without suffering the burden of all that `luxury' garbage (power locks, windows, sunroof, etc.).

That being said, please consider that even though this particular model is still a Volkswagen-it really requires much more `regular maintenence' than most other Dubs do.

I would reccommend that if you consider an auto as a simple appliance to get you to work, you should ignore the Corrado. I say so because I'm selfish. I wish to see these cars return to the hands of people who would care about them.