I had a long time customer, well he still is a customer, that bought a T'reg early on, I think it was the second model year they were out. Nothing fancy, base V[R]6 model, the medium sized wheels, no air suspension nonsense, it may have been equipped with a couple minor options cannot remember. But his wife was the primary driver for it, drove mostly city, and it got some weekend highway trips as the family car. He drove a Jetta TDI every day.
Anyway, that T'reg was pretty reliable, but predictable. It needed tires and brakes, like clockwork, every 20k miles. It was not abused, it was just driven, and I personally took care of it.
So, with regular PM, it cost about $2k every 20k miles to maintain. Not including fuel, which even the 6 cyl models consume with great haste. The only thing that "broke" in 120k miles was the prop shaft (common), and the blower motor (also common). That's it. But after 120k miles, when it needed its regular feeding of brakes and tires
again, in addition to its normal [not cheap] 120k PM services, the owner had had enough.
It illustrates the all-too-typical issues with ownership of one of these. And at the 120k mile mark, it is often common to see them start to need things like catalysts ($1200 part, 12.5 hour job), thermostat/housing/crack pipe reseal (another 12+ hour job), etc. Things can get REALLY expensive REALLY quickly. And then, you have to ask yourself, if you have to drop the engine out for those above items... do you also go ahead and rechain the engine, since those often are dead by 160k miles, too? I mean, you can EASILY have a T'reg that is in nice condition, well maintained, but need $10k worth of work. Which is why so many of them wind up at the auction yards for cheap.
I mean, shoot, there is a little plastic tube between the oil filter/cooler housing and the block on the V8s, and this is what you have to do to get at it:
That is on an Audi A8L, but the T'reg's 4.2L belt driven V8 (which is probably THE best engine overall in the T'regs offered here) is essentially the same.