I loathe Volkswagen and hope they go out of business due to their shady, shitty way of dealing with known issues. Back when they first came out with the Passat, I bought one new; it was sharp looking, handled great, had great pickup - loved everything about it...until I had a couple of issues that were extremely expensive to fix and that were caused by things that it became clear were design flaws, but that VW refused to accept blame for & left me on the hook for the cost of the repairs.
First issue was an "oil sludge" problem. Over time, sludge would build up and essentially cause the motor to burn up. A lot of mechanics pointed to a design flaw, a curve/bend in a line that was where the sludge built up and eventually caused the problem. After a class action suit, they refused to accept blame but did agree to reimburse for cost of the repair IF you could document that you'd had oil changed every 3000 miles; had to be able to prove that the oil change occurred prior to reaching 3000 miles, and had to have ORIGINAL receipts from a VW-certified mechanic. Oh, and they also changed the design of the engine to eliminate the problem area.
Second issue was a water leak. I'd parked on a hill, with the front of the car lower than the back; we had a massive downpour. When I went out to the car, there was about 3 or 4 inches of water in the floorboard of the passenger side. Unfortunately, the car's computer system is where....under the passenger side front seat, so it was shorted out. Brought it to the dealership to have it repaired, they said that the leak happened because the drain area over the passenger door was clogged from parking the car under a tree. They showed me the drain (both along the door and at the bottom, and said that it was clogged at the bottom, so the water backed up into the car. That damn drain line was roughly the thickness of the tip of an ink pen; it would take several days of steady flow of water through a hose that size to result in the amount of water that was in the car. A year or so later I found that there was another class action suit over a design flaw...if you were parked downhill, in heavy rain, water would back up in the battery box and spill over, into the passenger area of the car, flooding the passenger side of the floorboard. Again, they denied blame. And again, the next model of the vehicle changed the problem design.
Eff VW. I'm getting pissed just typing this. If their CEO gets executed in the next day or two...
