Piled Up in Huge Lots, Volkswagen’s Reworked Diesels Trickle to Buyers

I'd love a diesel for long distance travel. Diesels are actually better for greenhouse gas reduction over distance. Especially when transporting large or heavy cargo. You should really try one on a long trip. It's amazing. However, that's not what I do with my car most days. Petrol produces less particulate matter thus providing a cleaner urban environment. Better overall environmental performance for diesel versus cleaner air quality locally for petrol. My driving habits don't typically warrant diesel. If I really cared, I would buy electric anyway. Better yet, I wouldn't need a car at all. But I do need a car. I've owned to VWs. One I absolutely hated. If I ever met the engineer, I would bonk him or her on the nose. The second I absolutely love. I hope the car never dies. I'd certainly consider buying another VW despite the diesel brouhaha. I'm not so concerned that VW cheated. I'm mostly disappointed VW didn't deliver on what could have been an awesome idea: Clean diesel for the average consumer. Sad failure there.

I loved my Jetta TDI wagon. It was expensive to maintain in upstate NY winters and bad roads took their tolls, but it was a pleasure to drive and travel long distances in it while getting 40 + mpg. And polluting the air. We've owned four VWs, two Audis and a Porsche, but I will never buy a VW group vehicle again. What they did was unconscionable. I thought I was doing a good thing environmentally and instead I was doing a bad thing. I would add that no real penalties have been imposed on the people who did this, only on the corporation, which is very hard to put into jail.

Loved my TDI. I loathe VW, stands for “Very Wet”. Panoramic roof issues both front and back, awful customer service basically said it was my responsibility to keep the drain plugs maintained. Nothing in owner’s manual stating that. Matter of fact, it says to go to a VW service facility to change the lightbulbs. I can’t be trusted to do the bulbs but saying I should do the maintenance on the drain plugs. I have Toyota now and I am very happy.

It’s a great car except for the emissions issue.

Properly equipped and running the right software, modern turbodiesels are indeed a good choice for people who drive over 40 highway miles every day. What really makes me mad all over again is that VW was readily able to get those cars to comply with emission requirements; so, they cheated without any good reason, and gave all diesels an undeserved bad name.

The problem is that Volkswagen is selling those cars through their dealer network. These are now older cars and even though they have a warranty on them, there are bound to be problems. I tried to buy one. The price was too high for what the car was and when I asked whether they had a timing belt or a timing chain, neither the salesman nor the management would tell me. I had to go into the shop. You might ask why I would asked that question. The cars I was looking at were 2014/2015 models. In all of their making those cars legal again, they did not do too much with the Engines. They have timing belts What would I ask a question like the belt Vs the Chain is because the belts were at the end of their life span, even according to VW's standards which say that the belt should be changed after a certain number of miles or 5 years. The five years are basically over. The belts are not covered under the warranty and they cost more than $2000 to replace. So you get the car for approximately $14000 (the ones I was looking at) and shortly after purchase, you have to spend $2000 more on the car because the belt was either gone or needed replacement. I know a bit about cars, I worked for the largest dealership on one brand of car in the US. At the time I was there, they were using belts, but a broken belt would just cause the car to stop running. On the newer models of that manufacturer, a broken belt could cause $7000 to repair. If you want one of those cars, buy it.

I owned a 2013 VW Passat TDI absolutely adored this automobile on road trips, Wilmington to Orlando with granddaughter in December 600 miles no a/c 65 mpg nonstop for fuel astonishing! I filled the the tank upon arrival in Kissimmee Florida outside the Magic Kingdom. The problem with these vehicles is that they lack the safety technology that has proven to be very useful.

In the last 34 years I have owned three different VW diesels, starting with a 1986 Golf diesel that I bought brand new and drove for over 330,000 miles. I loved all of them for their frugalness. I have since moved on to a BMW 335d, which while not as frugal, has no noticeable tailpipe emissions, and gobs of torque. Now when I am in traffic and am behind a VW diesel, I get around it, when possible, as the belching smoke and black rear bumper, signify how polluting they are. It is almost as bad as a diesel truck 'rolling coal.' No thanks, I love having a diesel car, but I want one that has truly working emission controls.

For many years I had a turbo diesel Mercedes, the most reliable, cheap-to-keep car ever. But I'd never buy a VW. My best ol' buddy had a pre-scandal Passat diesel and the reliability was in the toilet. He couldn't get parts. He practically gave it away ,,, to a VW tech.

This simply baffles me. VW is caught in cheating consumers and regulators by purposely designing cars to release more pollution, VW admits to forcing monkeys to breathe diesel exhaust for four hours at a time to test its exhaust system, and people are still lining up to give this company their money? I especially loved this part from the article: “The only criticism I get,” Mr. Cieslak said, “is I’ve been vegan for five years, so people say, ‘Oh you care about the planet, but you’re killing the ozone?’” Ok dude. Keep living that vegan lifestyle.

We miss our TDI, was returned during the buy back. Luckily we have a BMW 535d a luxury oil burner that provides our family with long cruising joy 550 miles per tank and no plugs!!!

I had some suspicions when my Jetta TDI Wagon was getting over 50 mph on road trips ... it seemed too good to be true. It was. I miss Frau Swag, but I'm also happy to have moved on to another brand of vehicle.

No matter which way you look at it, diesels are dirty - the "clean diesel" business was a marketing fraud akin to "non-addictive narcotics." We can at least thank ourselves that we were never hooked on the dirt the way that the Europeans still are, pushed on by the powerful German automobile cartel. Short memories are right - people have forgotten the criminal cover-up that jeopardized our citizens' health. We should be striving instead to replace fossil fuel cars with electric at all costs. Instead, our national champion, Tesla, a company that should be this country's pride and joy, has been relentlessly hammered in the media for all sorts of the most mundane transgressions. Some stories border on the truly inane, such as worldwide coverage about the impact of a single vehicle accident involving a Tesla! Others seem designed to tank the stock price for the benefit of that truly capitalist delicacy, the "short sellers." I would implore the media and readers to ask where we want to be as a world in 20 years - still tooling around in dirty diesels, or powered in all manner by renewable sources of electricity?

It's good that the TDIs are not being crushed or sent to the third world where they can continue emitting lots of pollutants. Now that they're fixed they have to meet the same emissions standards as gasoline cars in the US. On the other hand, these cars are not as economical as the mileage figures would indicate, diesel is about 50 cents more per gallon than gas in the uS, and the disparity can approach $1/gallon at different times of the year. These cars also have a lot of expensive things that can go wrong with them. Current automotive diesels are not the simple bulletproof engines of 15+ years ago due to the complicated emissions controls that are required to make them run cleanly. For this reason diesels are a dead end in smaller vehicles. They're slowly being phased out even in Europe where they are much more popular. Gasoline hybrids and pure EVs are much better technology.

Diesel is relatively expensive and hybrid technology surpasses diesel technology in every way. I couldn't love my pre-owned 2011 KIA Optima Hybrid@150K miles more than a diesel VW.

I bought my Jetta TDI new in 2015. It was a no-brainer to get the repair made. During a vacation trip last year, I had 56 mpg during a 560 mile one-day drive. Excellent. I would buy another of these if VW were to begin selling them again.