The BEW cam issue is way overstated.
If you use the correct oil, it will go for hundreds of thousands of miles.
If it does happen to wear out, it takes a leisurely four hours to swap it out, and a new one is not prohibitively expensive.
My brother bought a brand new 2003 ALH about six months before I bought my brand new 2004 BEW. His car is on its second injection pump. My car had it's original cam up until about six weeks ago when the timing belt failed. I just replaced the entire head for simplicity, but the cam would have gone for a lot longer still. It had a small amount of wear, after 276,000 km.
An ALH injection pump is not cheap. Neither are four Pumpe Duse injectors. They cost about the same. The difference is you can replace one bad PD injector. The ALH injection pump must be replaced or rebuilt as a unit.
I don't know what all the panic has been about over the years with the BEW cam. It's right there at the top of the engine under the valve cover. It's easy to swap out, but even if you don't want to do it yourself I wouldn't expect it to cost too much at a shop. Four hours labor would be generous in a properly equipped shop. I had mine out last Friday after work, just to check the state of the lifters (they were fine). I started at 6:00pm and was done before 10:00pm. That includes locking the crank and cam at TDC, un-tensioning the timing belt, removing the belt from the cam sprocket, removing the injector rockers, removing the cam, putting it all back, adjusting the injector rockers correctly, tensioning the timing belt again, setting the cam timing with VCDS, putting back all the stuff that was in the way (ducting, side skirt, etc), cleaning up, putting away my tools, etc. Complete and thorough job, setting correct torque values on everything, no corners cut. I did that in less than four hours working in a condominium parking space. If a shop charges more than four hours for a cam swap they're overcharging.
The BEW cam is nothing to be afraid of, and the injectors are nothing to be afraid of.
What does that leave to worry about? Just the timing belt. That's the weak link in the system because when that fails, perfectly good parts get trashed. Inspect it regularly, and replace it whenever there's any question about it's condition. That should keep the BEW going indefinitley. Same goes for the ALH though (with regard to the timing belt).