- Hi Scotty, I'm looking to buy my first car for heading to college. I found a 2017 Chevy Cruze Gasoline Automatic with 37k miles and a 2018 Volkswagen Jetta 1.4T Automatic with 27k miles. Both are around the same price and sold by a major car dealer. I'm hoping I can reach 100k miles before any major repairs for my 4 years away from home. Which one do you prefer or recommend any alternatives? Thanks
Scotty has a video on the Jetta with the 1.4T. I'd watch that. For 100k miles, definetly the VW, but don't expect to get anything after that. The Cruze is just horrid.
To give experience from Scotty, he had a customer with a Cruze which had 80k miles on it. The transmission had to be replaced 3 times on it! Just shows the quality.
The video of the VW is called "Worst car ever made," but I can assure you that that title is one of Scotty's amusing 'clickbait' titles.
To sum it up: The VW is risky after 100k because of the interference engine and timing belt. If you go with the Jetta, I would have a mechanic check it out first, and then I would change the timing belt earlier on. 4 years is not that much actually but for a Cruze who knows the quality is dodgy and different every year.
Neither is a stellar choice, but for me VW over Chevy and newer with lower miles over older with more miles. So in this case I would say the VW since you are only hoping to reach 100K miles.
I think Chevy has more experience making automatics, and in my experience they ride better. I've never liked VW auto transmissions, and I don't like their interiors.
Test drive them both to see which suits you better. Give them a thorough look to see which is built better. Do your online research about bulletins and recalls etc.
