Faults:

Nothing so far, but I feared the worst when I bought it, seeing as the car had 2 year old oil in it, and the engine sounded like a laundry machine. Oil filter and new oil, and voila, it was as good as new.

General Comments:

I originally bought this car to use it as a point A to point B car, but it has become the car I use on longer trips as well.

My first opinion of the car, was that it was just a little rat, not stylish at all.

That changed a few weeks, and 600 km later. After a long trip, I wasn't tired and deadbeat, the little "rat" as I called it proved to be quite comfy, and the look of the car was really growing on me.

Now it's winter, -10 Celsius outside, and it starts easily, every morning. I leave the car running for 10 minutes while I drink some tea, or finish my breakfast, and I'm greeted with a warm car.

The roads are slippery this time of the year, but the rat seems to have as much grip as it did in the summer.

Now and again I take it on the roads just to burn out some residue from the engine, EGR etc, which the car tells me it wants to do by creating a fairly strong exhaust smell. "Higher RPM" the car commands, and the pedal hits the metal, the car smokes for a bit, then the strong exhaust smell disappears.

The car is hilariously nice on the fuel, returning an average of 4.9 litres per 100 km of fairly fast driving.

The fuel consumption does go up a little when I've only been taking short trips with it at low speeds, but a longer trip with a heavy right foot fixes that (these cars were not meant to go 60km/h forever...)

All in all, this is a great car, and it has yet to disappoint me.

Faults:

Various front suspension repairs. Costly (very).

Transmission electronic component. Not so costly, under warranty.

Various door/windows actuators. Very costly to repair and in parts. Typical issue.

Ignition coils. Expensive and typical issue.

Other glitches, mostly electrical that are often time expensive to repair in labor time and parts.

Front brake rubber (flexible) fluid lines cracked and broke while braking on the highway. The vehicle totally lost its braking power; managed to slow down using the hand brake. If you notice the front flexible brake lines to be slightly cracked at their lower end (where they connect to the brake caliper), replace immediately. This is the same for all 6-7+ year old vehicles.

General Comments:

This is a comfortable car, best suited for highway driving. It's economical (on the highway), very comfortable, including for tall persons, and the driving position is perfect and extremely well designed. The driving pleasure is relatively good, but again, especially on the highway. The car has some character about the driving feeling, and generally speaking it's very well balanced and put together.

Mechanically speaking, the engine and the transmission in this car are generally problem free. Some other components of the vehicle are also built to last.

However, there are some specific expensive components in the VW that are not built to last. Those include suspension components and several parts (actuators) that involve electronics. Please note that there are many suspension components, and quite a few electrical parts, so do not think there are only 2-3 parts that are going to break.

Do not buy second hand if you are going to have the repairs done at the VW dealer. I repeat, do not. Buy it only if you have a local mechanic specialized in European imports. It has to be specialized, because the labor on this vehicle is very specific. There are a lot of things that are very hard to figure out how to replace, compared to other vehicles.

If the car has been regularly serviced, the suspension components are OK, and the doors and windows actuators have been repaired (they usually fail after 7-8 years), this might be a good buy. I would suggest not to buy a vehicle that has more than 100K miles, or at least do not pay too much for it, say $2000-$3000 over that mileage.