Can VW end its skid?
Can VW end its skid? Can VW stop losing customers to Toyota and Honda?
The big question is WHY are VW freaks like us even considering Toyota and Honda?
The answer is design/build quality.
A while ago, I was in the VW stealership for some service on our '98 Beetle tdi. I ended up waiting around the service department for more than an hour, because I was early to pick up the car.
What an eye-opening experience. Almost every customer was irate about something. Several customers came in riding with a tow-truck driver with their car on the hook. Electronic problems. Power windows. Brakes that last 16,000 miles and are not warranty. The service advisors got yelled at A LOT.
My 98 Beetle experience concurs with what I observed at the dealership. The problems we've had, some of them more than once: hood release mechanism, fuel door release, oodles of burnt out headlights, fuse box meltdown, sound system meltdown, engine plug in heater, belly pan, power window regulators, power window switches, MAF sensor, MAP sensor, hvac fan switch, dash lights, clogged intake manifold, and the list goes on.
The design/build of my Beetle is just awful; trim that comes unglued, the belly-pan that self-destructs, the horribly inadequate interior light, and all of the aforementioned failures.
VW's skid can be illustrated up by this situation: the self-clogging intake manifold on all TDI's. THIS IS THE ONLY CAR IN THE WORLD THAT DOES THIS. PERIOD. When the TDIs first came out, VW said it wasn't a problem, and you should use Stanadyne fuel conditioner. Then they say it IS a problem, and the owner should pay the dealership many hundreds of dollars to clean the intake every 50k miles. Customers are not stupid. This is the only model of car in the world that does this, and every single one does it, and that makes it a DEFECT. VW should FIX IT without making owners pay. This situation clearly illustrates a corporate attitude towards the customer - and its a bad corporate attitude that the customer doesn't get from Toyota or Honda.
The other part that drives me nuts is the knee-jerk reaction of blaming the corporate difficulty on the labour situation in the German factories. The current problems facing VW are not due to paying a domestic worker a decent wage in decent working conditions. These problems are due to bad strategic decisions at the corporate level, and decisions at the manufacturing level to cut every possible penny from a design before putting it into production.
My first automotive experience was bench-pressing an air-cooled flat-four up into the engine bay of my '64 Beetle. Then, I owned a few A1 and A2 cars. VW enjoyed amazing success in the 80's and early 90's with those cars. Solid, reliable, and a notch or two above the rest of the pack in terms of build quality and "driving feel". How things have changed... talk about "driving feel" to someone who is riding with the towtruck operator with their Jetta on the hook. One word - HONDA.
Smart Cars of Europe currently offer the Smart For-Two model in Canada. Its a two seat, diesel (800cc) powered shopping cart that doesn't have enough room to carry a bag of hockey gear. Its twice the price of a Chev Cavalier, and is selling like crazy. The VW Polo would sell here, but instead VW gives us the Tourageg....
Yes, the current state of VW is regretful. For a VW freak like me to be thinking Honda, and for other similar VW freaks to be thinking Honda and Toyota, it brings a tear to my eye...
Mathew Banack
Round Hill, Alberta, Canada
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