I have a 2013 VW Passat with 208000 miles. I have only performed recommended maintenance. Could it be that a lot of car issues are due to lack of maintenance and not poor quality?
Obviously cars can break down from lack of maintenance.
But I also think VW just makes really crappy cars. And no, your personal anecdote doesn't change my mind about VW.
I am very happy for you. Being on top of the maintenance and not driving the vehicle hard certainly help get more life out of it, but don’t make up for the design/engineering that went into it. VW products are not the best engineered products for reliability or durability. Even a broken clock is correct 2x a day. For every good story like yours there are many more sob stories from others. Just be grateful yours lasted as long as it did. I trust the mechanics like Scotty and Car Wizard and others I know when they recommend which vehicles to get and which to stay away from (and that includes VW), because they are the ones that see these vehicles and work on them over the years. They have many data points and also can tap into a database of issues with these cars, so they know what they are talking about.
