Switch to mk6?

Anyone on here owned mk4 TDIs and switched to mk6? What's your experience?

My crop is

02 Golf TDI 210k many mods (keeper)
02 Golf TDI 295k (would sell)
01 Jetta TDI 195k 5spd swap, lots of new parts (keeping this one)
98 Beetle TDI 220k nothing wrong with it, but everyone in the family hates it lol (would sell)

We all know that despite their many VW quirks they are excellent cars. But the current price of mk6 Sportwagens is super tempting. I could sell 2 of my mk4's and pay for half a mk6. I would enjoy something newer, quieter etc. Not getting any younger. What am I letting myself in for?

Hey so Ive never owned a mk4 TDI but I had 2 mk4 gassers and have extensively driven a mk4 TDI, (gf in college)

The mk6 feels much bigger that's the first notable difference. I'm a big guy so perhaps Im more conscious of those things but it's definitely a perk in terms of long term.

The mk6 has notable differences from the earlier years 2011-13. Mainly the decontenting and cheap feeling compared to the mk4.
The mk4 feels more German, more luxurious and overall better made.
This gap however is closed with the 2014 models due to subtle but important and noticeable changes in the interior such as soft touch dash, independent suspension etc.

The common rail engine does circles around the alh? Found in the mk4 in terms of power and performance. Seriously, it's easy to forget that you're in a diesel due to how quiet and seemless the power delivery is.
Fuel economy advantage goes to the mk4. Mainly due to the ease of getting high mpg. With the mk6 you can get high mpg and in some cases higher, but you have to work a lot harder for it.....with the mk4 it is idiot proof.

Reliability, well debatable. The 3 main issues with the mk6 are as follow:
Dpf/emissions system
Hpfp
Intercooler icing.

The hpfp feature was overblown and it seemed that it was limited to the earlier models. That said, there are viable long term solutions such as cp3 upgrade.
Intercooler icing easily remedied as well.
On the other hand the dpf emissions issue is far more serious
Yeah you can go the route of delete and tune but if you fall under emissions testing, well then you're up a creek....so not really a viable nor legal solution.

While the mk4 don't suffer from any of the highlighted issues, they had a few of their own
The biggest one for me in my experience, were the constant electrical gremlins. Perhaps just my experience, but frankly any mk4 I've encountered had its own fair share of electrical gremlins that were time consuming and expensive to chase down.
I also found the mk6 more accessible in terms of being able to repair than the mk4 but that's just me.

Overall in my opinion, the early 2000's were the Pinnacle of vehicle reliability overall. Why?
Well some vehicles were still being over built/engineered. But that overengineering also came at an expense in some regard, difficulty in servicing some components and mystery electrical issues come to mind.

I know I didn't help you much here haha...
I'm a fan of keeping older cars on the road, but at the same time you have to ask yourself when the cost benefit goes away

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

Thanks! That's really useful information. I appreciate you taking the time to write that out.

A lot of that was NCS Jetta specific and doesn't really apply to the mk6 Golfs and Sportwagens.

turbobrick240 said:

A lot of that was NCS Jetta specific and doesn't really apply to the mk6 Golfs and Sportwagens.

Click to expand...

But the HPFP issue applies to mk6 sportwagens? I read the failure rate was 1% of cars sold per year.

Yes, all of the common rail tdi's have the CP4 hpfp. I'm not sure about the exact failure rates, but pump revisions were made and the failures seem less frequent on the newer cars. So far there have been very few(none that I know of) pump failures on the '15 m.y. cars.

MadScience said:

But the HPFP issue applies to mk6 sportwagens? I read the failure rate was 1% of cars sold per year.

Click to expand...

Exactly. Also the stuff about emissions

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

turbobrick240 said:

A lot of that was NCS Jetta specific and doesn't really apply to the mk6 Golfs and Sportwagens.

Click to expand...

^^I agree with this.

sandmansans said:

The mk6 has notable differences from the earlier years 2011-13. Mainly the decontenting and cheap feeling compared to the mk4.
The mk4 feels more German, more luxurious and overall better made.
This gap however is closed with the 2014 models due to subtle but important and noticeable changes in the interior such as soft touch dash, independent suspension etc.

Click to expand...

^^This is not true compared to a 2010 Golf TDI, or any MKVI Golf TDI.