I really liked how the car drove but after owning a 2001 Jetta I'd probably never buy another VW. That car had the worst quality control of any car I've ever seen. It was insane how much stuff broke in that car. I'll stick with Japanese cars if I was in the market for one.
That's how I feel about my 2010 Tiguan. It is just such a piece of shit. I like how it handles but every other day something on its breaking or the electricals acting up. Never again
Yeah it was crazy what went wrong in this thing in the space of a few years before we got rid of it... Just off the top of my head:
Pulled too close to one of those parking dividers and the bumper barely scuffed up onto it. All the plastic attachment clips in the front bumper snapped and the bumper sagged a couple inches from there out. They quoted me something like $500 to replace some plastic clips.
Fuel injectors sprayed gas onto the engine block causing smoke to come out from under the hood
Recall on the turn signals
Fabric in the roof of the car bubbled up and sagged down
Labels on the center console (radio/climate control/etc) started peeling off
Lid of the center console broke
Glove compartment door broke
Stereo broke
Cupholders broke
Driver side door speaker went
There was some other stuff too but it's been a while now. My last car was an Accord that I had for many years and that thing was rock solid. I still miss it but had to sell it when I moved out of the country.
I test drove one of those when I was in-between Mazdas just to see if it was better and was disappointed with the handling and power. Plus it was $8k more at the time. The Mazda I bought instead has only needed brakes and tires once in 8 years.
VW quality has been shit for decades. Having worked on most every brand of car, you couldn't give me a VW.
There's a meme about VWs that you can't get all lights to work simultaneously. There's always one that's out/dim, because their electrics suck.
An example of the nonsense they do: on one model the AC circuit had an ecu in the drivers door, which also controlled the door locks and windows. So if your door lock controller died, so did your AC.
No reason for this, there wasn't any automation between windows and AC. Just crappy VW design.