Educated Guesses: Will there soon be a flood of cheap TDIs?

With the news that VW/EPA/CARB have finally approved a fix for the Gen I cars, my mind starts to race. As I understand it, VW has held onto a huge quantity of these cars, and with the fix approved, can fix them and start selling them:

As of the end of May, Volkswagen had 37 secure storage facilities around the United States housing close to 275,000 vehicles. Those places include a shuttered suburban Detroit football stadium, a former Minnesota paper mill and a field near a raceway in Colorado.

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Assuming they fix all of them, and I don't see why they wouldn't, that's 275K cars that are going to go into a market in the next two(?) years that is arguably somewhat burned on diesels.

Seems like that is going to lead to some extraordinarily good deals...?

And the specific context for asking the question: Have a 2011 JSW that has arguably seen better days. 115K on the engine, coming up on the timing belt service, some serious dents and scratches, interior worn, etc. I'm one of the apparently 15% of folks that hasn't sold it back yet... trying to decide if we sell it back and basically get a newer (2013?) model, which will probably be cheap and have a CPO warranty, or if we keep it and get it fixed.

Opinions, please.

They'd have to be cheap AND have a 10 year warranty on the HPFP.

Some of these cars are as much as 8 years old at this point. A HPFP job at the dealer would exceed the value of the car.

For newer ones, like 2014, they'd be worth more obviously, but I'd still be concerned that the HPFP could turn a good deal into a money pit, so it would be all about the warranty for me.

HPFP pfft. There will be idiots out there that don't know a thing about the failures. They'll blindly buy and spend spend spend.

They're not fixing all of them. Not even close. Pictures of flattened ones abound.

My advice: Take the buyback, buy a fixed one, and install a cp3 hpfp sometime before the warranty runs out.

As with all things related to dieselgate, there seem to be way too many variables here. My initial thought is that even if they were extremely cheap, there could be a ton of issues that make the cars practically not viable.

I'm sure someone will try to sell them. As the saying goes, there is an ass for every seat.

h.ubk

I think VW will be fairly selective about which ones they fix for resale. They won't want to lose money on warrantied repairs.

Lots of speculation in other threads. My thoughts are that VW will not release anything older than 2012 and over 100K miles. That will greatly reduce the potential number of cars available for the used market.

Warranty in the fix is 4.5 years or 54,000 miles (IIRC) for basically everything under the hood, including the HPFP.

kjclow said:

Lots of speculation in other threads. My thoughts are that VW will not release anything older than 2012 and over 100K miles. That will greatly reduce the potential number of cars available for the used market.

Warranty in the fix is 4.5 years or 54,000 miles (IIRC) for basically everything under the hood, including the HPFP.

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Sounds about right to me.

Spoke to a local Pick n Pull junkyard that is crushing a lot of bought back TDIs for VW. I was told they are all 2009-12 models...

Leads me to believe if a gen 1 was bought back by VW, it only has a chance of being put back on the market if it's a relatively low mile, good condition 2013-14 model.

We'll see. I think low mileage '11 & '12's in excellent condition may also get put back into circulation. I hope so, anyhow.

I hope so too. The 11 Golf we turned in only had about 65K miles on it and someone should be driving it. Money was too good to pass up though.

Interesting. I'd forgotten about the severity of the HPFP problem in the in the 2009-12's or so... also makes me think we're turning our car in soon. We're at 119.1K as of this morning....

What I don't get is why they'd be saving 275K cars in storage facilities all over the USA. If they weren't planning to resell them, why not just crush them now and not pay for storage?

Probably because someone will have to go out there and inspect each car to make a determination on it's fate.

h.ubk

dordal said:

Interesting. I'd forgotten about the severity of the HPFP problem in the in the 2009-12's or so... also makes me think we're turning our car in soon. We're at 119.1K as of this morning....

What I don't get is why they'd be saving 275K cars in storage facilities all over the USA. If they weren't planning to resell them, why not just crush them now and not pay for storage?

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Probably because on the whole, they didn't have their act together about what they were going to do with all of them, or were delusional on how many they would be dealing with, what condition they would be in, and how much they would be worth on resale given the sheer number of them.

If it had been up to me, an initial cull would have been done right at the buyback dealership. Anything 2009-2010, anything with more than 100,000 mi, anything with obvious major mechanical problems (bad clutch, inop A/C, "deleted" emissions, clogged DPF, etc), anything with non-trivial body or interior damage, would get the orange spray painted "X" of doom and hauled off to the local scrap heap rather than ever being stored in the hope of reselling it.

Here are photos of the field outside Pueblo. My friend and I drove by there on our way comping down south. Made me sad.

wow.. that last pic sparked me to do some googling.... insane!!!!

detroit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qdX4nVRYdc

colorado: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iECcy7SAVqE&spfreload=10

I think they are going to start fixing and selling them right after they are done selling the new old stock 2015s, and the used 2015s. All for top dollar. They are not worried about selling them quickly.
What was the market for VW diesels, 100,000 units per year? Maybe half that now after the scandal? Since they are not bringing any new ones to this country, they can take their time.

Do you want to buy these cars after they are fixed? I'm getting calls every week of customers who had their cars "Fixed" and they are complaining of lack of power and poor mpg.

CoolAirVw said:

Do you want to buy these cars after they are fixed? I'm getting calls every week of customers who had their cars "Fixed" and they are complaining of lack of power and poor mpg.

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I'm sure that the fix can be fixed!

The "FIXED" TDI'S

I would buy one.....and Immediately delete all of the emissions equipment.

KITEWAGON said:

I'm sure that the fix can be fixed!

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It most certainly can!

CoolAirVw said:

Do you want to buy these cars after they are fixed? I'm getting calls every week of customers who had their cars "Fixed" and they are complaining of lack of power and poor mpg.

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I'm thinking maybe our chip tuners will get on this.

CoolAirVw said:

Do you want to buy these cars after they are fixed? I'm getting calls every week of customers who had their cars "Fixed" and they are complaining of lack of power and poor mpg.

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That's not what we're hearing. In fact, quite the opposite.