what the heck happened to VW?

i was just looking at vw's website. just looking at and semi-dreaming of a sportwagen TDI. what happened here...it was almost $32k vw used to be cheap!

 

I remember seeing the sticker on a 2007 Passat wagon (with a 3.6 V6) and thought it pretty reasonable at $32k - As nice as a A6 Audi Avant for $8k less......

 

Sounds like they read the Porsche price list. Where's the savings to drive an efficient vehicle? Nuts.

 

I have a 2002 VW Passatt wagon, that I bought used in 2004 from CarMax, and you're right, VW's aren't cheap. Sadly, I can't say they're worth the money either. I wouldn't reccomend a Passatt to anyone who looks for reliability in a car. This was my first time ever buying a VW, and I won't make the same mistake twice. The list of expensive repairs is too long to post here. The only person I know who had a car that had a longer list of expensive repairs was a buddy who had an Audi Quatro. He bought it new in 2003 and unloaded it in 2005 after countless trips to the dealer and even having a manufacturer's rep look at it. So I wouldn't reccomend the Audi either.
Might I suggest a BMW or a Subaru Outback or even a Dodge Magnum?
As for me I wish I bought the Magnum.
Meanwhile, its a little off topic, and a little long, but the following letter was posted on another forum and I thought I would pass it along. Its a good read and it further explains why I now wish I had bought a Magnum instead. I don't know who the author is.

Living in Detroit

Being from the Detroit area this letter from a Detroiter who moved to the West coast got my attention. Sorry its a little long, but tells it like it is! Too bad!

Farewell to GM, from a factory rat's disloyal daughter

It's been nearly a quarter of a century since my dad punched a clock for the last time, but he's still got his tools, the ones he used for 37 years in the die room at a Chevy spring and bumper plant,> though they don't get much exercise anymore. My parents moved into senior housing a couple years back, and if something breaks, Dad just calls maintenance. The only thing he fixes now is supper, a job he's taken over from my mom, who suffers from dementia. Dad is 83 and, like his former employer, he's seen better days.

Back when I was a kid growing up on the northwest side of Detroit, everybody we knew was connected in some way to the Big Three. The streets in our neighborhood were named after Ivy League colleges, but it was a solidly blue collar area; block after block of modest little houses plunked down like tokens on a life-size Monopoly board, most of them crammed to the rafters with kids. Every morning at six thirty, with the precision of a choreographed dance, back doors would open and men would emerge and, after hasty goodbye kisses from women in curlers, they would vanish into the steel jaws of the great automotive giants, only to be belched out again eight hours later, twelve during model changeover time.

"Generous Motors" (with the help of the U.A.W.) put the food on our table and the roof over our head and the money in my parents' bank account, money that financed much of my education, supplemented by what I earned from my own well-paying summer jobs at my dad's plant, one of the perks that went along with being in a GM family. My dad, the son of an itinerant laborer from Arkansas, was lucky to graduate from high school. I, on the other hand, like most of the kids I grew up with, viewed college as a birthright. I even tacked on three years of law school. Such a huge change in just a single generation, made possible by virtue of a strong union and a robust industry.

And how did I return the favor? How did I express thanks for my newfound upward mobility? I packed my bags, moved to California and, like millions of my fellow baby boomers, promptly went out and bought a Japanese import, which I subsequently traded in for a Volvo.

On News Hour late last week, I listened to an interview with Micheline Maynard, New York Times senior business writer and author of two books about the decline of the American car industry.
According to Maynard, the demise of General Motors comes largely as a result of changing brand loyalties among baby boomers. By 1990, half of all Americans under age 45 did not own American cars. Just as we rebelled against our parents' taste in music and clothing and hair styles, so we came to reject their choices in transportation as well.

Okay, maybe we had good reason. American cars didn't last as long, or so the thinking went. They weren't as fuel efficient. But how hard did we try, really? How much comparison shopping did we actually do? The truth is, in my case, and in the case of many of my peers as well, it never occurred to us to buy an American-made car. And so we went blithely on our way, tooling around in our imports, listening to Bruce Springsteen sing about decaying cities and forgotten workers, and we never even made the connection.

All I ask i s that we take a second look. Start by reading this article, Misconceptions about the Quality of American Cars

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ress=114x16660

My husband and I have decided to only buy American from here on, figuring better late than never. He likes his new GM car, a Yukon hybrid. It's good for a big guy like him, and for hauling big dogs and navigating country roads, and the mileage isn't bad for an SUV. When the new Chevy Volt comes out, I'll trade in my Mini. Yesterday morning, as I drove home from San Francisco on Highway 101 in a sea of foreign-made cars, listening to the bankruptcy news, I called my dad to see how he was holding up. He sounded tired. Like many in his generation, he put his faith in big institutions, things he thought would last forever. Now he wonders what will happen next. His dental and vision care coverage will end July 1. After that, who knows? (Though in another few months, his own wife may not even recognize him, which puts things in a certain perspective.)

My dad could always fix anything, from a toaster to a ten-ton drill press,and even, on occasion over the years, his daughter's broken heart. He's my institution. After we hung up, I thought of a line from Middesex, the brilliant novel by Jeffrey Eugenidies: "Grow up in Detroit, and you see the way of all things. Early on, you are put in close relations with entropy." The traffic was sluggish, as it often is at that hour and, while I waited for it to clear, I contemplated the rear end of a shiny black BMW 750i idling dirctly in front of me. It had vanity plates, surrounded by a frame that said "life is a cabernet." Yeah, right, I said to myself. Tell that to the folks back in Michigan.
__________________


As a side note, as the letter clearly points out, Americans just aren't making the connection. My personal observation is that the vehicles getting crushed in the Cash for Clunkers program were mostly American, but the cars Americans were buying were mostly Asian.

 

perhaps you misread me jim,

i have never owned a foriegn car, apart from my 1991 corolla which subsequently never saw the road in my 1 mo. stead. and that was because it was $300, needed an engine and i think im a shadetree mechanic.....im not.

the reason i was looking at the vw is because it is the only diesel CAR in my price range....well....kinda. id never trade my buick in on a foriegn car. The thought of near 50mpg from a wagon of useable size was definately a draw. realisticaly i would buy a charger or taurus (wife isnt "down with the long roof")

however, as my friend dominic puts it "there is something satisfying about driving an 8 cyl car" and the buick gets between 20 -22. i just wish i didnt live in the salt belt.

 

Jim that's an excellent article. Whoever wrote it should get a medal.

Henry Ford's story goes back to when he was a goldminer in the California Gold Rush, came back to Detroit and built a wagon 'factory', then moved onto cars, then onto making them from start to finish, like any wagon-builder would, including the forgings for the iron work. What he did, when I was studying Industrial Engineering in University, was later called Vertical Integration. One of the most efficient systems ever. He'd buy the forests for his wooden frames, he'd actual forge his own axles and steering parts and then brake drums. At one plant, they started with raw materials at one end, and assembly at the other, for 1.5 miles long!

When you think about it, our resource-rich lands have Iron, Nickel, Copper, Silicone (glass). We are only missing the 40% rubber content for tires and seals. It just makes too much sense to do that in North America, yet we are seeing Foreign companies buy up our mines, our steel and aluminum companies, our petroleum and lumber resources. And the Government has the best opportunity in the world, right now, with the Government Motors ownership, to reinstate a Vertical Integration model for the Auto industry.

You can't call it socialist, because Ford's way kept Ford OFF the dole. Even the Russians don't use Vertical Integration in their industries. An American First, that let Henry Ford even reduce car prices, 30 years after he built the first Model T. The man had a vision, and proved it, and we cast it aside. That's sad.

 

Found links to both articles:

Farewell...
http://open.salon.com/blog/laurel_n...l_to_gm_from_a_factory_rats_disloyal_daughter

Misconceptions...:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=114x16660

Both are excellent info and comment!

 

I didn't realize you were looking for a diesel wagon, but i didn't intend to make it sound like an attack on import wagons either. Maybe I was just venting a little too much about my experience with my own VW wagon.

 

yeah i like alternative fuel. id convert a roadmaster (not tiki) to a duramax if it wasnt so expensive.

your "attack" was actually appropriate. far too many people buy foriegn, and dont give detroit a 2nd chance. the cars put out by detroit and dearborn these days are awsome. the new taurus is a work of art. as is the new buick lacrosse. and ford has as much reliability as honda...(btw my moms ac went out on her honda element the other day.....31k miles)

American manufacterers need to offer alternative fuels. but by the same tolken. gov needs to lay off the emmissions requirement for diesel cars and light trucks. in the late 90's early 2000's VW offered diesel in all its cars. new bug, golf, jetta, and passat then here come the emmissions requirements.
bye bye TDI gen 1! bye bye jeep liberty CRD (which had a lil 4 cyl detroit)
and now no diesel f150 or expedition (which were planned with the baby powerstroke).

 

My ex-wife has a VW Beetle and mechanically it has been really reliable however everything that is plastic is falling apart. Many pieces of the interior are broken and various other plastic pieces under the hood.

 

The only VW I'd buy would a pre '68, maybe a type 3 squareback (station wagon).

 

I like all my cars. My 96 civic gets such great gas mileage, even though I drive it a hundred miles a day in Houston Hell. It's so quick and maneuverable. The 2008 Subaru has turbo, and well,.....its just awesome. The old Impalas are my family, also they demand respect on the Houston highways. I love stopping somebody from trying to cut me off when they underestimate my well tuned 70's jalopies.

The civic I have had the longest. It has 180,000 miles on it and has saved me a ton of money because it rarely breaks down. It's almost crazy how reliable that little sucker is. It still is almost as fast as when new.

 

Just checked the price down here for a 2008 starts from $52490 (AUD)

 

VW... reminds me of an ad from them which outdated itself (the same day as it was printed IMHO).... seeing that ad you would never buy a VW:

 

OK, I call "foul". There's a 59 Chevy wagon in that heap.
Sorry VeeDub, you lost my sale.

That ads works opposite for me as they intended. I wouldn't mind owning quite a few of the cars shown there.