🤔 💭 Our cars aren’t selling… Hmm… Should we make them last longer? No. Should we make the interior out of anything except hard plastic? No. Should we make our cars easier to repair and not have even the most basic shit require specialized tools? No. I got it! Subscriptions for basic shit that gauges the few customers still buying our shit!
I understand your point, but have you driven a VW in the past decade? They are reliable, relatively easy to repair and have comfortable interiors that aren’t with “hard plastic.” Perhaps you’ve confused VW with Ford?
I fix cars for a living every day.
reliable
Maybe, compared to a BMW or other “luxury” car marketed to rubes. But a Honda or a Toyota would totally eat VW’s lunch in regards to reliability, at half the purchase price.
relatively easy to repair
The VW Beetle is famously easy to repair, basically every modern VW model sucks ass. It needs some proprietary tool to access half the vehicle on more than half the models. I do not like working on them. We also get wonderful examples of German Manufacturing Precision™️ where you have a half a millimeter clearance to remove a part. This was worse in older VW’s in my experience (the Germans really took to AUTOCAD like fish to water when that became common, methinks) but it still happens.
comfortable interiors
Actually totally agree here, the interior of most modern VW’s is pretty nice. Shame that doesn’t extend under the hood.
VW also got caught straight up lying about their emissions testing a few years ago so that also destroyed basically all trust that I had in their brand. They’ll sell you a car that runs, but there’s really no knowing if the numbers that it reports are actually accurate.
EXCEPT the fuel pump for a Passat 2013 to 2017 is 400 to 600 dollars for the pump only. You can find some on eBay cheaper but when you can’t drive your car then you have to get what you can get.
Yeah. I think my car has a pretty decent build overall but the (I shit you not) 14 recalls ive had to bring it in for ranging from door handle replacements, firmware updates, back hatch issues makes me raise an eyebrow to it. I let a few stack up before I bring it in because I never notice any issue before or after, but better to get the free service than not.
Evidence strongly counters my own feelings on the matter.
Ford is even worse than VW, but VW is overpriced shit.
No doubt they are all overpriced, but I thoroughly researched my Škoda before buying it in 2020 and it was competitively priced, especially with its reliability score and relatively low maintenance cost. In my case of course anecdotal, but I’ve had no issues after 90,000 km with a lot of Autobahn.
I’ll just put it this way if you check the used market for pretty much any European car in the states you can get them very cheap compared to their original price because no one wants to fix them. That is by design imo
Capped speed isn’t enough. I want it to slam the brakes on the highway and go “Tired of the ads? Get the Volkswagen Battlepass and enjoy an uninterupted drive!”
Ooh, how about it accelerates really slowly at stop lights unless I pay for “turbo mode” to not get honked at?
I’m actually fine with that. People don’t need to go 0-60 in an intersection.
But what about 0-10? 0-5? Surely you’d be better off limited to 2 mph/kph for the first 10s after a stop.
Drive for yourself not for others.
Sold my Audi when they started this, VWs are already overpriced basic shits.
Give me asian cars.
And they wonder why nobody’s buying their cars…
Strange comment, since VW group sell by far the most EV cars in EU.
Yet you get a dozen upvotes. You guys are weird. 🤣🤣🤣In EU they sell well. not in the US, however.
not in the US, however.
🤣🤣🤣
I wonder why that may be. but incidentally Porsche was the most profitable brand in USA before Trumps stupid tariffs, and Porsche is also VW.USA can go fuck themselves, they are making themselves irrelevant. Hyundai is also losing profits in USA despite investments:
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/hyundai-motor-warns-bigger-hit-us-tariffs-after-q2-profit-fall-2025-07-24/Hyundai will be fucked over too, it’s just a matter of time. VW decided to scale back in USA, instead of fighting the windmills.
I’m not dissing Hyundai, they make OK cars at OK prices, I might actually go for a Hyundai for my next car, but mostly because it’s cheaper, if I can find a VW or Skoda Enyaq 80 or 85 at a good price, that’s the one I want.
I wonder why that may be.
Parts are expensive since everything needs to be imported. This has been true long before Trump started messing with tariffs. Parts are way easier to get and cheaper in the EU.
Toyota is popular here for the opposite reason: parts are inexpensive and easy to find. They’re also imported, but they’ve done a much better job figuring out their supply chain.
Porsche is also VW
Maybe by ownership, but they target a very different demographic and thus are designed very differently.
Hyundai is also losing profits
Hyundai is a lot more popular here than VW. Why? They’re cheap and reasonably reliable. VW isn’t as reliable.
Regarding reliability it’s weird Hyundai already has such a good reputation for reliability, because it’s not many years ago that Hyundai was pretty poor quality. Like for instance the Hyundai Sonata was really awful with rust. And the way the car was built was outdated.
So just a few years ago, there was no comparison that VW and Toyota were vastly superior quality to Hyundai.
I know they are better today,but still I must admit I’m surprised if they are really better than VW?
For instance the Hyundai Kona 64 had a total recall on the batteries. That’s an enormous issue to have had.VW was never comparable to Toyota. The top has always been the Japanese brands, sometimes with caveats about certain transmissions (e.g. Mazda and Mitsubishi CVTs).
German cars are fine, but parts are generally hard to get or are expensive. Many shops won’t touch them, so you need to find a European imports shop.
Here’s some data from 2024, VW is fourth last, ahead of Land Rover, Audi, and Chrystler. Somehow they’re behind Luncoln…
Hyundai and Kia aren’t at the top, but they’re reasonably good and their price and warranty make up for the issues they have.
Here’s the image:
That schematic is basically worthless, first it’s “per car”, with no mention of average age or mileage.
Mercedes is no doubt among the absolute most reliable cars you can get, most Taxi drivers here use Mercedes for that reason.
But Mercedes also on average drive longer than most other cars, because people who drive a lot tend to prefer Mercedes more.
VW only ranking a couple places above Chrysler is laughable. There is no way that can be right.
Also Audi ranking below VW is ridiculous. Audi is to VW somewhat what Lexus is to Toyota.
Something is definitely off with that chart.But I do not deny that Hyundai may have improved enough to be as good or maybe even better than VW, What I questioned was how they could have that reputation already few years after they clearly sucked on quality. Being reasonably good now, is exactly as expected though. Because when they were bad over a decade ago, they were so bad there are probably very few left on the roads. It was not just something that needed to be fixed bad, it was very much also end of life for the vehicle bad.
I skimmed the article to find the methodology behind the numbers, but couldn’t find it.
The study, now in its 35th year,
That indicates my previous point, they don’t account for age, it’s easy to stay “average” if your cars are scrapped after a few years. It also explains the poor position of Mercedes.
Here for instance Volvo has a longer life span on average than Toyota. Toyota are good cars, but they are generally not built to last as long as Audi or Mercedes.
I bet you don’t see as many 30+ year old Toyota as you do Mercedes.
OK, but still USA is just 1 of the 3 biggest markets in the world, and the one where VW is doing worst.
All three brands are very reliable, so i bet the margin in that regard isn’t big between them.
On a global scale VW remains ahead of Hyundai.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_manufacturers_by_productionAnd I’m sure VW is a lot cheaper in Europe. My uncle bought an Audi when he lived in Germany because it made sense there, and now he drives a Japanese car because Audis don’t make sense in the US.
If you buy German, you need to be ready to spend a lot on maintenance and repairs here in the US.
Our family was looking for a newer car. We found a listing for a VW, went to the dealership with intent to buy and was told that the car (which was standing RIGHT there) was available for sale in 3 months. Now we enjoy our new Toyota.
The car has to ripen.
You dodged a bullet.
VW has gone down the drain.
Yeah, he dodge-d a bullet. Good for him he could af-ford something better.
Das subscription
Die*
Is that in english or german?
Yes
