Replacing an econobox.

[Beewi]

At my house, the TDI wagon is the "family car" and the road trip machine. My comuter car is a little hatchback with a hand grenade for a transmission. Given that repairing it when it inevitably dies would cost more than twice what the car is worth and just start the timer on an encore failure, I've been thinking about replacement options.

Obviously the Prius and the Fit are solid, boring little cars that Just Work (TM), but if I'm committed to having the scanner and tools to do basic troubleshooting and service on one TDI, am I nuts for adding a second? Anyone here daily drive a new beetle?

My current commute is about 20ish minutes of 70 mph highway and 5-6 miles of city, one way. Would that be a waste of a deetle?

 

[oilhammer]

The Prius (all of them) are an over rated can of crap once they get some use on them. We deal with them a LOT here. They are not bad when new, and for the first 100k miles or so, but after that... it becomes a real crap shoot. The 1.8L 2ZR-FXE cracks heads/blows head gaskets, and they are prohibitively expensive to repair, so we just swap used engines in and hope they go a little longer. They clog up the EGR tubes and cause #1 misfires at start up and makes the engine shake and rattle all over. They burn oil. The catalysts die, and some have coolant flowing through them so the replacements are nuts expensive (like, $2k+), the hybrid batteries don't last forever, and all the little electric cooling system bits fail and cause all sorts of problems, sometimes causing the $3k inverter to overheat and die, and the ABS units have accumulator issues and are a royal cork soaker to replace. The lesser-known and poor selling Prius C avoided much of these issues, and was generally an all around better car in my opinion. However, when new they cost $6k more than a Yaris hatchback, and that's essentially all they were... a Yaris hybrid. Used they may not be as big of a difference, but if you could find a well cared for Yaris, you'd probably be rolling for less money and less stuff to go wrong. So what if it "only" gets 40 MPG?

The older Fit wasn't terrible, but the later ones have chronic injector problems, and they got cursed with a CVT if you don't find the rare and now NLA manual gearbox.

I've owned a couple NBs, one gasser (2.slo) and one diesel (ALH). The NB is on what is easily one of the best platforms VAG has ever had since they let the Audi engineers take over their product design: the 4th generation Golf. Unfortunately, the NB suffered from what I would label as "fragile" interior bits. Some of that was improved on the later ones, but they also got an ugly facelift in 2006, and that was also the last year for the diesel NB here. So while a 2010 NB is a nicer car interior and trim wise than a 1998, they're all 2.5L gas engines.

But if you can find one that is in good shape and don't abuse or neglect it, they are a great car to drive. GOBS of room for the driver and front seat passenger. They handle well. Little sketchy over 100, due to the shape of the body, but not terrible. They do sit LOW to the ground, so their underbits often take a beating.

Lots (most) of body and interior bits are NLA, so fixing one up beyond the mechanicals can be tough.

 

[Lightflyer1]

I am driving a 2015 Beetle and have had no real issues with it. Low mileage (60k miles) though due to Covid and I work from home now days a lot. I do about the same drive at about 25 miles one way highway mostly. Just suffered through a hail storm that totaled it and I bought it back and fixed the glass. Still is dented up but runs great and the warranty is still intact for a long time yet for me.

 

[oilhammer]

... Anyone here daily drive a new beetle?

He asked about a New Beetle... I assumed he actually meant a New Beetle, and not a "new" Beetle.... two completely different cars.

 

[CanadianALH]

He asked about a New Beetle... I assumed he actually meant a New Beetle, and not a "new" Beetle.... two completely different cars.

The way the sun is on the yellow one in the back it looks like a 911 lol

 

[Lightflyer1]

Well he actually called it both a new beetle and beetle (deetle). Most don't realize the difference. OP should clarify. I took it to mean any Beetle tdi. Being that he has a 2013 Jetta SW tdi I assumed he meant any Beetle version up to 2015 with a tdi.

 

[Beewi]

Sorry about that confusion. I made the mistake of posting while putting a baby back to sleep.

To clarify I was mostly looking at the ones made after the switch in 2012 to the A5 (newER beetles) but would also be open to the A4 (New beetle) assuming it wasnt a complete rust fest. Even more so, if they really are one of the better designs VAG put out. I assume that the upside of the polymer panels everywhere is that plastic can't rust. I guess it just can't be helped that plastic embrittles over time. Though if your have enough scrapes and bends in it you eventually embrace the mad Max look, so that's a plus.

And I do have a soft spot for the Yaris and Echo, even if they're ugly little things. I get the feeling that lately toyota has been trading on their reputation for quality hard. All kinds of problems with the Tundra are showing up, and their gas powered car line up can't put up the sort of showing that 2001 Camrys used to.

But yeah, I would love to hear recommendations for or against dailying an A5 or an A4.

 

[oilhammer]

Toyota has damn near fallen off a cliff in recent years compared to the older stuff, you're right. A well cared for 2001 Camry with 250k miles on it would be a better car than anything they'd sell you today, no doubt about that. The first and second gen Camry was probably the best, though. Especially the '88-91 with the 3S-FE. If you can keep the rust away, those things were epic.

 

[Lightflyer1]

New cars are so complex nowadays that it's hard to find one that is as reliable as some of the older cars that didn't have a lot of this stuff. If I were going to look for a new beetle I would look for a 2015. It has this cvca engine and if I recall they went back to Independent rear suspension on that year. I haven't had any issues so far with the plastic parts of mine.

 

[oilhammer]

We're starting to see the pattern failures of the EA288s... some minor (CKP sensor), some major (like mystery coolant-in-cylinders causing a need for engine replacement, or the oil pump belt coming apart and causing a sudden loss of oil pressure).

It's a shame that we only got this engine for its first year, because I'm betting they refined it some and improved it by now. But then again, the EA888 has been around since 2008, and they're still crap, so...

Amazing that the same company that made some amazingly simple, tough, durable engines also makes some of the most complicated and fragile examples too.

 

[d24tdi]

OH, in what you see day to day, is there anything vehicle from the last 10 years that you think is solid enough to be worth recommending?

Acquaintances and family members who know that I waste my spare time and money on car hobbies sometimes ask me what new or late model used vehicle they should buy -- not realizing that whatever limited knowledge I do have is strictly confined to 20 year old old diesel VWs and similar era heavy equipment plus a few random other rigs and I am completely ignorant of everything else, LOL. But it would be nice to have an answer for them other than saying "check out whatever Consumer Reports recommends" since I think CR only looks at the first few years of reliability of new cars, which doesn't say much about which ones are good to buy at 10 years old.

Now that even your average Civic or CR-V has a turbo and CVT (I think?) it doesn't seem like the reflex of buying a small Honda or Toyota really works anymore.... Neither with the Korean brands which seem to make nice stuff but as complex as anything else. What's the relatively recent equivalent of what you used to be able to get in an ALH era Mk4, or a circa 2005 Civic/Corolla/Elantra/Focus etc? Talking about conventional design.... no turbos or CVTs, no belt driven oil pumps, no computer controlled water pumps or thermostats.... well proven mature mechancial systems with no experimental features, the kind of thing that will still be running well and dependable in 25 years if taken care of, like many well cared for cars from 25 years ago are today.

Seems like the NCS Jettas with an 8v 2.0L are a possible example, although I guess they didn't make many of them. A friend recently bought an 2015 Honda Fit with a standard trans that looks like a straightforward good car. VW's 2.5L 5cyl engines in Passats and Jettas OK mostly OK? Is there anything made since 2020 that fits this kind of pattern?

 

[CantWrite]

I daily’d a NB for 4 years and 75k miles. Commute was 98 miles RT over an easy Mtn pass and all above 6k’ elevation.

I loved it, drove like a little go cart. (S7, PP520’s, 3-bar map). Returned 48 mpg winter and 52 mpg summer like clock work.

I reminisce about it quite often. I still repair big items, just did a high mileage TB job. I miss the mpg and passing power, but the B5.5 wagon is lovely.

As OH said, front seats have room for days as commented by my 6’2” 285lb dad. My kids were 5&3 then, now they wouldn’t fit. Removed rear seat bottoms cause I’m 6’5”.

quirks I found, handle to pop seats up to access the rear can easily break, keep the broken piece as you can still make it work. When inside, Close the doors by grabbing the lower portion of the interior handle. The cupholder is worthless, and don’t lean too hard on the arm rest.

with the rear seats down, you can fit 190 cm powder skis or 20 gallons of diesel, or 400 lbs of tools easily. I loved the access of the hatch over a wagon but the wagons are just too sexy!!

02 NB.jpeg

• CantWrite
• Aug 20, 2024

 

[Beewi]

Appreciate the insights! Its good knowing they can handle the foothills. I took my little hatch up and down to Estes Park while hauling 4 other adults once, and man was that a slow climb...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Consumer Reports only allow people that have paid subscriptions to CR to vote on what this year's "most reliable" and "highest satisfaction" vehicles are? The reliability scores don't actually tie into any actual data for frequency of large repairs, or number of buyback/lemons per 100,000 vehicles, it's all consumer sentiment. Toyota could release an engine tomorrow that grenaded itself consistently 1.1 miles outside of warranty and it would still probably take 5 years or so for the "new car' problems to trickle down into the used economy hard enough to shift sentiment.

 

[oilhammer]

I'd take much of any CR stuff with a grain of salt. There's a lot of stuff in between the lines and poorly gathered information in my opinion. I did a two year tour of duty at Lexus, and at that time if you'd asked CR you'd think those cars were made of gold, put together by fairies and wizards, and each one blessed by the pope as it rolled off the line. But I can assure you, they had PLENTY of problems. The big difference was that Toyota would bend over backwards to make the customer happy.

This is a pic from 2009:

The black IS in the air closest is a model that debuted in late 2006, and the silver ES is a model that came out in 2007, no neither car was "old" at the time and you can clearly tell by the shiny transmission from the IS on the floor under it, neither had many miles on them... yet here they were, both with their engines out and all apart.

In fact, the GR engines pretty much guaranteed that at any one given time, at least one guy had one apart in the shop. Yet CR rated all those cars top notch. Go figure...

 

[oilhammer]

As far as I am concerned, the golden era of modern cars was in the 2000-2010 era, depending on the model/engine/brand/etc.

There is a reason why two of my three sisters (the third has no children) have a 2006 Toyota Sienna minivan.... it's the last year of the MZ engine. The simple, sturdy, well known and reliable 3MZ-FE. 2007 they got the GR (the engine family depicted above).

Everything seems to get more complicated and more fragile as they get newer. In the early 2000s, they'd pretty much gotten a good grip on engine management as it related to OBD2 protocols. Sure, Honda and Toyota still struggled a bit with the evaporative emissions equipment, but at least we knew what we had to do to fix them.

Today, so many cars are saddled with things like turbochargers, direct injection, cylinder deactivation, CVTs, or completely ridiculous numbers of transmission ratios, along with such worthless crap like start-stop, grill shutters, a boatload of stupid nannyware and "infotainment" garbage, and now yet another A/C refrigerant that some cars (GM) are already struggling with, it's just laughable... and what's really laughable is how much money they want for these things.

The F-150's base price is now over $40k. Part of this is because Ford decided to ditch the base 3.3L V6, and now made the 2.7L turbo V6 (the 'Nano' engine) the base engine. ***??? 90% of our fleet pickup truck customers drive base XL trim F150s..... with whatever the base engine is. In my career, I've watched this model be equipped with the indestructible 4.9L inline 6... that was last used in 1996, dating back to the late '60s. These engines were not only plenty strong to do what they needed to do, they didn't break. They. Did. Not. Break. People could beat on them, neglect them, didn't matter, they'd always come back for more. Fleets loved them. We never (and I mean NEVER), had to mess with one beyond oil changes, filters, spark plugs, etc. I've never even had to replace a frickin' water pump on one! And we've serviced THOUSANDS of F-trucks and E-vans over the years that had those engines.

Then they went to a 4.2L V6 in 1997, which was itself a punched out 3.8L V6, which had already had a well known history of problems... mostly headgaskets (Ford had a warranty extension), but the added stress of making it a 4.2L + putting it in trucks/vans and unleashing them to fleets? Hah! Ever heard of a lower mainstay? Neither had Ford, apparently, and that's why the cranks flexed so bad in those that they had a bad habit of scattering the rods out the bottom of the engine.

I think the 4.2L was still on offer in the F-150 through 2009, but I've not seen any in years... they're all blown up (yet we still occasionally see one of the old 4.9L trucks here, and there are oodles of OBS/Bricknose/Bullnose F-trucks still on the road in Missouri). Sadly, the manual transmission also went away with the 4.2L.

Then Ford tripled down, and stuck a punched out version of the Cyclone V6 in the F-150, a 3.7L. Yay! Now we got Mustang and Taurus engines in pickups! And with an all-new 6sp slushbox, so... yeah...

Fleets have now learned to deal with blown timing chains, random cooling system component failures, random transmission problems, all brought on with these "new and improved" engines. Went to a 3.5L V6, then finally a 3.3L V6, and while there was a couple years that the 3.3L still got the 6sp, the rest of the engines got the awful 10sp, and in 2021, the poor 3.3L got it too.

GM, not to be out done, in an epic "hold my beer" moment, has now decided to ditch their base V6 (the 4.3L, which is NOT the old SBC-based 4.3L V6, but a newer LS-based version that came out a few years back) and replace it with... you guessed it... a 2.7L turbo.... only theirs is a 4 cyl. GM must really be on drugs if they think this is a good idea. Don't get me wrong, that 4 cyl is powerful... around 300hp... and it'll ****-n-git even in a big Silverado. But you give it to some grunt to run around for a job, and it'll blow up in short order. Used to be you could pretty much depend a GM truck would rust away and fall to pieces before its engine gave up, and assuming it was missing a third pedal, it's life was just a matter of how many transmission replacements you were willing to do. The engine would happily soldier along. The old 4.3L, 5.0L, 5.7L were pretty tough and simple, and the 4.8L/5.3L were really good engines. But the new ones? Not so much...

2020 Suburban, 81k miles:

 

[oilhammer]

So what's a "good" car? I'm not so sure.... I'd say the older garage-queen cars are probably the best bet. I'd take dead Aunt Helen's 2000 Camry that smells like mothballs and has door dings up and down the sides of it and scrapes on all four corners that spent most of its life in a garage and only has 100k miles on it over a brand new one.

 

[CantWrite]

@Beewi ....... Oilhammer nailed it!! And like him, I’ll keep my older less efficient, less powerful junk running before I buy newer.

I need very few things to make me happy, delay wipers, CC, AC/heat, and a descent radio.

I grew up before all these sensors, so I still look at my tires before jumping in, use a wall to check brake lights, can see the body lines to know if my hood popped. Can feel the wander/spongy-ness when a tire goes low, can hear wind noise if a door isn’t closed all the way, and what to do with different engine noises or shifting weirdness. And yet my old cars will still run 80 mph down the interstate with the cc set.

remember hood ornaments, you could use them to triangulate the exact position of your passenger wheels.

I digress, I would choose reliability over a little extra efficiency every time.

 

[d24tdi]

Makes sense on all of the above. Scary/crazy to think of the total cost to society from equipment like this that is needlessly complex, breaks often, and is extremely costly to repair. Not just engine and drivetrain parts either, right? Almost every bumper has proximity sensors in it now.... every wheel with TPMS sensors.... Backup cameras and screens in the dash....

The idea of a "golden era" of auto design also has seemed real to me, though in my mind it has always had 1996 as the starting year, with the introduction of OBDII. Then running as you said to circa 2010, maybe a little later in some cases. The real sweet spot seems to be the very late '90s to early '00s. Very few screens in dashes, many great vehicle and engine designs. It seemed like engine design and management tech in particular had reached a point where electronic controls and computer-aided construction was mature enough to make fully modern equipment with all the benefits of refinement and efficiency from that, but excessive complexity (and regulatory stress) had not yet arrived. Our beloved ALH engine is of course from that era. PD's that followed it just about equally good. Sticking to VAG designs, many of the other greats also from that stretch of time.... First couple generations of 1.8T, 2.7TT, 2.8L, the belt-driven 4.2L. Not everything was perfect (VR6 timing chains? 096/01M autos?) but certainly look back on em as products we miss. Looking further out, the 7.3L PSD reigned in that stretch of time, as did the 5.9 Cummins in various iterations.... Ford 2v 4.6 and 5.4L great engines all around.... Early era of GM LS family without VVT.... GM still had the 3800 V6.... Honda and Toyota and Mazda bread and butter passenger cars and vans/pickups were mostly unstoppable. Etc. Right? And these are just the small collection of models I have some kind of familiarity with, no doubt there are many other examples.

In addition to the range of old VW diesels I drive, we have a '99 Accord 4cyl sedan that is due for a timing belt again now at 243k miles. We just scheduled it to go in for that at the local Honda indie specialist. Sometimes we think about changing to something newer and almost without a doubt the timing belt service plus a few other things it needs will add up to more than this car is "worth" in terms of its street resale value. But I can't see a path that makes more sense than keeping it going for another 10 years and 100k. We have taken good care of it since buying from the first owner at 50k miles, and it remains dead reliable, still looks good and drives well. Tons of glass, great visibility (the old way of solving the problem that's now solved by backup cameras and parking assist, lol). What is out there new that would be better to replace it with and have fewer issues over that 100k? Seems like nothing?

But it's a serious question, because maybe there is something. Part of what makes me think that is I have a 2014 F-250 with 6.2L gasser and 6R140 trans that is now at 310k miles..... incredibly trouble free, great runner, and simple in the ways that the "golden era" stuff was, where all the technical progress is focused on things that benefit longevity and simplicity rather than the opposite. TPMS is really the only thing that I would rather it didn't have. It's a low trim rig so no screens in the dash or cluster. It's only 10 years old but has none of the tacky stuff that most modern vehicles have. The truck is mostly very similar to my 2002 F-250 with 5.4L...... Except it is just better in every single way, better front suspension design, 100 more horsepower, two more gears in the transmission, and no sacrifice in complexity or reliability or durability that I can tell. So that makes me wonder if there are other vehicles out there from more recent years that are also in that category.

 

[oilhammer]

Your '14 Super Duty is largely as you know an extension of what was already around.... that platform truck came out as a '99 model in '98, and the 5.4L by then was already pretty tried and true, as the "Triton" engine was the truckified version of the Modular V8s that came out in the 1991 Town Car in 4.6L trim. The 6.2L is a further development of that. And the 6R140 was an extension of the original truck slushbox, the E4OD/HD, that came out in 1990.

So yeah, I'd think that IS a pretty good one. And the SD trucks avoided much of the F-150 issues. They either use the older-than-most-of-us Twin I-beam front suspension which is brutally simply and tough (2WD) or an even older solid front drive axle (4WD) that is equally beefy.

Again, it really varies. The "last" of any version of something has the merits of having had any bugs worked out of it usually. Hoping (but not holding my breath) that our 2024 Mini Cooper, being the tenth and final year of that platform, holds true to this.

 

[MattRabbit]

I have a 2015 Golf TDI and my wife drives a 2014 Beetle TDI. Both are 6-speed manuals. Both are excellent cars (so far) and have had no mechanical issues. The Golf has had issues with water ingress (the sunroof is a POS), but the Beetle has been totally solid.

I swapped my 2001 Golf TDI for the mk7. It had 393K miles on it when I sold it (sold it to a forum member!). While I like the mk7, I LOVED the mk4. That thing was the most reliable machine I've ever seen. I miss it quite a bit, and sometimes wish I had hung onto it. That said, the mk7 has lots of interior bits that aren't falling apart, so there's that.

The Beetle gets 42-ish mpg on the highway. It doesn't do amazing, but it's not terrible either. My wife loves it, and it drives just fine for her. I threw in an RCD-330 and backup camera, and she's happy as can be. As a commuter, it's a fun little car, and is a hoot to drive. I do like my Golf better though. YMMV.