When we sold our Jetta back, they had a Golf wagon with the gas motor. I'm sure it would do fine, but our impression was that it was a gutless pig. Probably feels that way coming from the diesel. We did not buy the Golf wagon.

Your impression is spot on! Likely was a 2.0 NA car which did not have direct injection.

The new turbo DI engines are fantastic. I had a GTI with the TSI engine for a couple years, it was comparatively weak to its peers but still torquey. Now driving a GM LNF engine and it puts down better numbers than v8s of its time.

__________________
TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

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CENSORED due to not family friendly words

While I admittedly picked my Cruze diesel somewhat "just because", I'm not sure what gasoline car would get over 60 mpg highway and still be torquey fun to drive, for just over $20,000. Because I actually considered a few for the sake of being objective and I didn't see any. Not saying I don't worry about the reliability, but I have a warranty. Whether or not it all balances out I don't know, maybe not ... Just saying it does have some selling points.

Edit: meant to add, to the OP's question ... I only know one person who got the fix instead of taking the money. He said he doesn't really notice any difference in performance or mpg since the change. It's a stick sedan.

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1987 300D, arctic white/palomino--314,000 miles
1978 240D 4-speed, Euro Delivery, light ivory/bamboo--370,000 miles
2005 Jeep Liberty CRD Limited, light khaki/slate--140,000 miles
2018 Chevy Cruze diesel, 6-speed manual, satin steel metallic/kalahari--19,000 miles
1982 Peugeot 505 diesel, 4-speed manual, blue/blue, 130,000 miles
1995 S320, black/parchment--34,000 miles (Dad's car)

I have wondered how those cruise diesels have worked out for owners. No local sales of them or very few.


Never talked to anyone that owned one. If the diesel turns out to be basically trouble free .You probably are ahead of the game.


Cost of fuel for cars is a much larger issue up here in eastern Canada. It takes about 40.00 to buy 8 US gallons of fuel. I have the oddball engine in my older 2006 Jetta model. Where there is no high pressure pump. The injectors themselves are pressured up by the camshaft and electronically fired. It seems to be getting better fuel milage than the newer engines.


We burn a lot of fuel in this household. Volkswagon is starting to dump a lot of buybacks up here now. I am starting to even see some of them on used car lots. Favorable reports are out there regarding fuel milage and performance. With some having issues.


What Volkswagon has partially concealed is the pollution gear was turned off because of issues caused with carbon buildup in their systems. Not to particularily enhance other things. They were having too many warranty issues with the problem. I think my generation of engine was where the problem revealed itself.

There were no diesel sales of 2007 volkswagon diesels here. The problem was that bad plus the engines were eating camshafts. To pressure up the injectors they added four more lobes to the cam with reduced contact areas for the lobes. . I think time has proved that their oil change period was too long. Change it at half the recommended period and the cam problem seems to cease. Why they could not figure this out themselves is beyond me.


They came back in 2008 with the doctored emission system I suspect and high pressure pump rail system. I can modify my older engine to eliminate the carbon problem.


That high pressure pump should be changed out probably at 100 K. If it fails it costs thousands to repair. As the pump shreds metal it gets the injectors etc. as well. A new pump is about 500.00. Sane preventative maintenance.

I owned a 2011 Sportwagen TDI. I purchased it new and put 178,000 miles on it. Other than the scheduled maintenance and tires at 76,000 miles an EGT sensor went bad, and I had to remove the DPF to replace it. Since the DPF was coming out I purchased a DPF delete kit and got an ECU tune too. The tune gave the car 163hp and 295ftlbs of torque. With the 6 speed, that car was so much fun to drive. I tracked about 170k miles of driving on fuelly if you want to look at real world numbers of someone who was driving the car and not trying to get the most mileage out of it. Also I was in NY for most of this time and would get worse fuel mileage in the winters. JSW TDI (Volkswagen Jetta) | Fuelly

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Old Blue - 83 240D 6 speed manual trans, OM648
Green Machine - 2001 Europa G500
87 300SDL Bought on Peachparts. Low-ish miles..?

Family Truckster - 2012 VW Touareg TDI

Patchouli Wagon - 2004 E500 - SOLD
333k mile 97 BMW 750il V12. - SOLD
The Californian - 85 300TD - SOLD
Daily Super Sedan - 03 Audi S8 -SOLD

Ours was an 11 as well, with 155k on it. Tires, filter changes, and the AC were the only things touched. I told the wife if the DPF ever needed replacing we'd delete and get a tune, as you did. Sounds like yours was much more fun afterwards.
If I see one priced reasonably for sale, I would get another.. Wife says she liked that better than her Acura TSX wagon.

It was the 1.8T, and maybe not a fair comparison since it was an All Track. But, the turbo seemed to take forever to spool. I just kept thinking this thing would suck trying to get into traffic in a hurry. Once the turbo did finally spool, it was ok.

Wow, thanks folks!! BirthdayBenz that's really neat to see! Yeah, with the warranty, I'd probably not tune unless I opt to keep it after warranty is up. It is a lot of fun to drive - thinking of picking up some seat covers for it so the kids and dog don't destroy it prematurely! I wonder if VW can pull off reselling all these without depressing value further - normally I'd bee skeptical but these are a helluva deal and a few people tried to buy my car while I was waiting on paperwork.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We owned one for 120k and sold it back. It had minor issues, but was a fun car. One thing to be aware of with these is the HPFP (high pressure fuel pump). One tank of gasoline or water contaminated diesel and it self destructs. The shards go throughout the fuel system requiring the entire thing to be replaced. I think its $7k in parts alone. The '09 supposedly had 5%/yr failure rate. I believe they improved the design in '11 on model years, but be aware. Don't fill up at low turnover stations in the middle of nowhere if you can help it. That was my primary reason for dumping the car.

Interesting--the 1.8 isn't all that bad (nor was the 2.5 it replaced) but 170hp in a awd wagon seems like it would be a little underpowered. I never really had any lag issues in my GTI. Maybe a little chuggy at low rpms but that's more of a spool threshold than lag. More peppy than a diesel for sure.

__________________
TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

So with cheat mode a manual TDI is 20% more efficient than a w124 manual diesel.

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CENSORED due to not family friendly words

Great color. Imo there are not enough brown cars out there anymore. I hope it will turn out to be a positive ownership experience. Personally I'm glad to see some of these cars get back on the road ... I may have considered one if I'd known they were an option, with that warranty and that price.

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1987 300D, arctic white/palomino--314,000 miles
1978 240D 4-speed, Euro Delivery, light ivory/bamboo--370,000 miles
2005 Jeep Liberty CRD Limited, light khaki/slate--140,000 miles
2018 Chevy Cruze diesel, 6-speed manual, satin steel metallic/kalahari--19,000 miles
1982 Peugeot 505 diesel, 4-speed manual, blue/blue, 130,000 miles
1995 S320, black/parchment--34,000 miles (Dad's car)

Do you have a second tank on the car? Or does your data combine some fillups? Going 1,300 miles without filling up sounds nice.

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1987 300D, arctic white/palomino--314,000 miles
1978 240D 4-speed, Euro Delivery, light ivory/bamboo--370,000 miles
2005 Jeep Liberty CRD Limited, light khaki/slate--140,000 miles
2018 Chevy Cruze diesel, 6-speed manual, satin steel metallic/kalahari--19,000 miles
1982 Peugeot 505 diesel, 4-speed manual, blue/blue, 130,000 miles
1995 S320, black/parchment--34,000 miles (Dad's car)

I'm definitely not expecting it to be trouble-free (mainly the emissions crap) which is why I bought the extended warranty. The dealer is a mile from my house and I get a loaner for any time it's in the shop. I am hoping it won't be a total mess, of course. I am in some groups and most people seem to have good experiences, a few have had emissions codes that required a dealer repair, and a couple have had cars that are a total mess (but seem to still love them, when they aren't at the dealer). It's a small sample size. And of course it's anyone's guess where these cars will be at 100K. The Jeep Liberty CRD is a notorious basket case but I got 10 pretty smooth years out of mine, even with some woes, and it's still a good second driver. If my experience with the Cruze is the same I won't complain. Honestly my biggest concern is whether support for it will drop out like it did for my Jeep.

I only have just under 5,000 miles on it so I can hardly speak to the reliability. So far I have re-filled the DEF once, they gave me a jug when I bought the car ... easy, other than I was incorrect about the tank size and this resulted in a bit of a spill. Diesel here is not bad, fuel prices in general are low. Per Fuelly my operating cost has been $0.054 per mile. That will go up in winter of course. So far I'm really enjoying it. I'll admit that a lot of the reason I bought it, like tjts said, is "just because" ... I feel terribly depressed about the future of cars and I figured this will be the last time buying a new car will be interesting or exciting to me. There are still a lot of new cars that excite me, including gas cars, but this was the one that excited me the most by far. So I bought the one that thrilled me while I still could. I custom ordered it just how I wanted it.

__________________
1987 300D, arctic white/palomino--314,000 miles
1978 240D 4-speed, Euro Delivery, light ivory/bamboo--370,000 miles
2005 Jeep Liberty CRD Limited, light khaki/slate--140,000 miles
2018 Chevy Cruze diesel, 6-speed manual, satin steel metallic/kalahari--19,000 miles
1982 Peugeot 505 diesel, 4-speed manual, blue/blue, 130,000 miles
1995 S320, black/parchment--34,000 miles (Dad's car)