1998 Volkswagen Golf review from North America

Trunk lock mechanism has never worked.

Cam head (?) replaced at 20,000.

Interior cloth on shifter and emergency break quickly deteriorated.

All side panels have fallen off.

Locks on all doors have broken off.

Back plastic panel holding up license plate has fallen off.

Plastic parts on the radio broke off while trying to fish out a tape that got stuck.

New clutch at 80,000 miles Dealer quoted $1000, fixed at $350 elsewhere.

Transmission cracked about a week after purchase.

Reverse has ALWAYS made a bad noise.

Locking mechanism sometimes locks on its own.

Sometimes locking mechanism fails- won't lock or unlock.

Air conditioning broke (some kind of pump?) at 80,000, dealer quoted me at $1700. Probably not the value of the car.

I always keep my back seats down for large loads, and the black fabric protecting the back of the seats has come off and is now exposing the yellow foam underneath.

The dials on the radio rarely work- if you try to turn the volume down, it goes up, and vice versa.

I am extremely embarrassed to have anyone in my car because of all of the aforementioned problems.

While the golf handles well and gets great mileage, I would absolutely NEVER purchase another VW.

Everything has been glued to the car, and is now falling off.

These cars are not put together well.

I have had problems with this car since the day I bought it, and dealerships have not been helpful.

The dealerships always use scare tactics to try to get me to get things fixed that don't need it, they don't fix the things they say they have (and have charged me an arm and a leg for.