Temperature sensor died.
Clutch wore out.
General wear and tear - e.g. wheel bearings.
Water pipes corroded.
This car has been absolutely superb so far, as a "first" car. It's not the nippiest thing on the road, but it generally cruises at about 80mph on the motorway, and is quite happy toddling around town as well.
Generally, I tend to get about 35mpg out of it (which works out at about 280 miles on a full tank).
Pretty much all the work which has been done on it to date has been on the standard "wear-and-tear" stuff - wheel bearings, clutch, timing belt, etc. All things considered, these have been pretty cheap to replace, and it's essentially sailed through the MOT tests so far - on the last one the only issues were with the windscreen wipers and a lightbulb on the licence plate!
It's worth noting that the car hasn't let me down once yet while driving, which is a pretty good achievement for a 15 year old car!
The only bad thing about all this, is that it's very difficult to justify buying something shinier...
I should have updated this earlier, but I eventually traded in this car for a Mazda 626 (a somewhat bigger beastie). The main reason for the switch was because something collapsed in the clutch (a bearing or somesuch). The cost of repair was getting close to the value of the car, so I decided to part-ex it in...
Still, up to that point it was a great little car, and I still miss it - especially when trying to park up my showboat:) I'm certainly considering moving back to the VW fold for my next car!
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