Faults:

Air conditioning on hot days didn’t cool enough, but this was due to a clogged air filter. No problem here.

Engine idle started to oscillate and the car started to shake a little. Dealer said this was caused by improper air getting in the engine.

Cloth from the roof started to peel off on four corners of the roof.

Rubbered door handles and switches scratch very very easily.

A/C temperature controls have bad contact (when you try to select a temperature, it doesn’t obey).

Tire wear; it's two times the normal car (even with all the wheels well aligned).

General Comments:

Very well designed, but not well built.

Very comfortable ride.

Fuel consumption is very low considering its weight and engine.

Very good gearbox (6 gears auto). In normal mode the focus is low gas consumption.

Faults:

EGR valve failed £300, airbag faults, steering column lock failure £1000+, various electrical faults, central locking failure £250 etc etc...

General Comments:

This car is superb to drive and gives 50mpg+ on a run. The car has a full VW main dealer service history and is in an excellent condition. I love the look of this car.

I have to sell the car as it is simply too dear to maintain. I have only done 10000 miles over the last year, but have needed in excess of £2500 worth of repairs. The steering column fault is a common failure, which costs loads to put right, and can only be done by a main dealer for loads of money.

(If it does not go soon, I am sure that I will be caught out by clutch & DMF failure, injector failure and possibly oil pump failure; all well documented faults on the net.)

Faults:

One of the engine coils became defective around 25,000 miles. This caused the car to cough and shudder on the highway, and felt like it was going to stall at any moment at city speeds. With the coil failure, it was running on 3 out of 4 cylinders. We brought it back to the dealer who would not fix it, because the car was out of warranty! This seemed ironic to us, as our 2001 Jetta 1.8 turbo had the exact same problem! It's funny that a big company like VW couldn't fix this problem after 4 years of building this same type of engine. Maybe they just didn't care enough.

The VW emblems on the factory optioned wheels looked like the lamination was failing, and they were stained with water marks. This also happened on our past VW - Another thing they could have fixed in 4 years!

The "stainless" steel trim on the car was cloudy and not shiny anymore. I tried polishing it, but the cloudiness wouldn't budge.

General Comments:

This was a very expensive, top of the line VW - we expected a lot more for our money.

The stereo sounded great, but it was very difficult to adjust. I miss having one knob for on/off/volume, and one knob to search stations - I guess that makes too much sense!

The back seats provide very little leg room. We should have just kept our Jetta.

The awful new car smell never went away. It always smelled terrible in that car.

The car always made funny noises related to the fan. It always made me suspicious that there was something else wrong with the car.