Faults:

Things that have gone wrong or were required replacement as peripheral components:

Brake pads and rotors, serpentine belt and tensioner pulley, spark plugs and coil packs, heated angle connector for PCV on intake (shorted out and caught on fire), valve-cover gasket/bolts and valve-cover itself (leaking cover seals, all and everywhere), tires, oil filter housing gasket, third light for trunk lid (cracked apart), head bolts (broke because of temperature/metal differential between Al head and Mg block), VANOS solenoids (cleaned them and they worked again), Valvetronic eccentric shaft sensor replaced (just because I never want to do this job again!), driver's seat ripped apart at seam (I don't weigh much but it was -35 that day and thin leather doesn't do well frozen), passenger side view mirror glass came unglued and fell off (re-glued).

General Comments:

Love it, that's why I keep fixing it... sure it's got some quirks, but it wasn't made for our extremely cold climate, but in the summer months I couldn't ask for a better/ funner machine. If you do your own work, it's cheap and relatively easy, and therefore, a pleasure to work on. Simple mods like intakes and exhaust actually make a difference on this engine. Unlike others in their class, you can always squeeze a little more torque out of these things from simple mods. As an aside, this car is smaller and lighter than the 3 Series that shares the same engine.

On the bad points, I'm forced to relegate my complaints to those concerned with winter woes, almost expressly so, as I have had no notable summer troubles!

For starters, the materials used in the interior of the car are mostly durable, seat is too thin of a material. As I mentioned before, it ripped when I sat down in it at minus 35; I weigh 160lbs.

Glue for sideviews is shoddy at best when it comes to temperature change.

The car has no block heater... seriously?

The car has no spare tire or tire-well... this means runflat winter tires, which suck, or go with normal pneumatic tires and hope for the best.

No command start! It's a German legal hipster thing I suspect... but there are aftermarket options available. And for those who don't know, when it's minus 40, even full synthetic turns into honey like goop in the pan, engine tolerances are all screwed up, especially with mag/al combinations.

The car has a virtual dipstick to check oil! Not winter related, but still a worthy mention. Fine and good to be able to check the oil from the dash without getting out of the car, but more often than not, it takes over five minutes of idling in park on level ground to get a reading... who's got time for that?? I could check it with a dip stick in one second! Also it's counter productive to Germany's stringent "no idling" laws, why design it this way?

Winter driving in this thing is beyond horrible, no matter what tires you have. If it's more than 6 inches of snow on the ground you're breaking out the chains.

Anyways, nothing else has gone wrong with it, and when it works (which is 99% of the time) it works fabulously!

Faults:

Cold start problems, faulty injector, body flex rattles over bumps.

General Comments:

This car is seriously quick and handles like it's on rails.

However the cabin is very gloomy and the seats are uncomfortable.

Faults:

Nothing.

General Comments:

Brilliant performance with handling to match, in fact I think it could handle more.

Build quality is faultless.

It will hit 37.2 mpg on a motorway run at 70mph, but mixed driving will normally reach 25mpg.

Automatic is excellent, much better than the DSG alternatives as the automatic is purely that. With the double clutch, change ups are instant.

Tyres are expensive, £425 per pair. Rear ones last 10k.

A lot quicker than I thought, it's won a lot of traffic light take offs and some top end races.