2003 Volkswagen Touran review from France

Lousy plastics -- some ventilation vents broke (replaced under warranty).

The "check engine" light turned on for no apparent reason and had to be service to be turned off (under warranty).

The driver window mechanism broke, leaving the window fall down inside the door, less than 2 weeks after warranty ran out. VW refused to cover it.

Windshield had to be changed (hit by a small piece of rock on the highway).

We had to change the trunk carpet -- entirely our fault for having an badly closed can of paint in the trunk!

Did I mention the crappy plastics? The plastics are crap.

This is a comfortable car for hauling a family with 2 or 3 (small) kids.

Lots of room, enough storage space to accommodate several families of hamsters. The kids loved that car.

I had a love-hate relationship with this car, though.

The quality is both excellent for everything that's not plastic, and absolutely horrible for all plastics. Whatever type of plastic they used is brittle and marks ridiculously easily at the slightest scratch.

The car's 1500kg are a challenge for the 115hp 1.6FSI engine. Thank god for the 6-speed manual. Anything else would be hopeless.

The upside of the small engine is that it burns very little fuel for a car of that size and category. I commonly averaged less than 7.5l/100km on longer trips.

The biggest downside with this car is that it's a Volkswagen, and unfortunately my local VW dealer was a hopeless jerk with attitude.

I reported several times a problem with the driver window, which they refused to do do anything about, until the thing broke for real literally a few days after the warranty ran out -- and of course they refused to cover it under warranty.

If you consider this car, check your local VW dealer: many of them (in France) have way too much attitude.

Also, maintaining and servicing this car is *very* expensive. But it runs around 25K between services.