VW's are great cars, especially in this day and age of high gasoline prices. I've owned a Volkswagen Golf GLS Turbocharged Direct-Injection (TDI) diesel car since 2001, and overall, I've been very happy with it. Indeed, you would even have to call me a smug-bastard whenever gasoline gets above 90 cents / litre; though diesel is now comparable / litre, I continue to get WAY better mileage.
The do have their downsides, however. Like all vehicles, you have to do the maintenance, and VW's oil changes for the TDI mandate a premium synthetic. As well, at some point I'm going to have to get the timing belt replaced, which will be a nice $900.00 bill... this normally happens between 96k and 125k kilometres. Still, it's not that bad; you know that one is coming and can budget for it.
Last week, I had to take my car in for it's 80k service, which is an oil-change and tire-rotation. Now, I KNEW I had to get new tires this fall, so I had sorta been expecting that. What I didn't expect was to have to replace both front wheel bearings.
Quote 1 (tires): $155 ea, plus 15% tax.
Quote 2 (wheel bearings): $697.00 all in, bearings, labour and tax.
Sooo... thank you very much, and walk away to think about this one for a couple of days.
I ended up getting way better tires than what they were trying to foist off on me for $125.00 installed, plus tax ea. How much better? On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the best, I've got 9.8's; they were trying to give me 6's. Bastards.
The wheel bearing issue was vexing... I'm a city driver. I don't take my VW Golf diesel out 4x4ing. Why did both front bearings show a predisposition to failure at the same time, at the relatively young mileage of 80K KM? They couldn't answer me that question, though they agreed that it was suspicious that both would be going at the same time.
So off I went (they were really noisy, not quite terminal). I came back the next day with two written estimates to replace the bearings from other mechanics, though not VW dealerships. They were comparable at around $499.00 plus tax. The VW service associate was more than happy to meet their price.
Moral of the story? Never trust mechanics / dealerships / sales associates (myself excepted of course!) and never pay retail for anything other than food and booze.
Regards,
Mark ;)
