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I have never owned VW Beetle but I really like the looks of them. I can only afford a used one but I would really like some input about the Beetle. I know not everyone is happy with just one style/make of car, if that were true there would be only one make of car ! Pros and cons anyone ? I appreciate your input.
Pro - a lot of older people like them for nostalgia and take good care of them
Con - it's also a girl's car, so expect many to be abused until daddy gets rid of it
A lot of this depends on what year your thinking about getting.. but here are some general statements.
Pros
Most beetles are diesel which means mpg's and sometimes cheaper gas.
Reliable engines
Safe
Nice interior
Good cornering
Girly car - pro if your a girl
Cons
Expensive to repair
Diesel - some people dont like the sound of diesel, and you need to remember to use diesel. Gas in a diesel engine is badddddd.
Slow
Girly car - con if your a guy
Soft paint
Only if you take it to a dealer. if you use a good independant shop, you can save a lot of money and get better service. There are usually good independant VW shops in most major matropolitan areas and quite a few in outlying areas, as well.
Are you talking about a vintage or a new VW and specifically The Beetle? I like the looks of the newer Beetles (not that they are that much different) but I found the interior parts cheap. I heard there were maintenance issues - my husband told me that, at one time you had to replace your headlight bulbs at the dealer??!! We had a couple of older VWs and our main concern was air cooled engines and low oil capacity -especially if you are in Phoenix during the summer. Several years back we looked for newer version VWs, our observation was oil was still a problem issue - meaning it looked like they had high oil consumption -we looked at the dipstick level on one car and it was EMPTY!! Now my son just bought a GTI and I drove it - pretty sporty but we'll see how it holds up. Hard to resist at zero percent financing. As far as diesel, we had a diesel Rabbit at one point (when diesel was cheaper than gas). I understand that diesel engines seem to last longer and get better mileage but now that diesel is 20 percent more expensive than gas I'm not sure the initial cost is worth it - plus I used to have to carry stinky gloves in the car when I had to fill the tank!
The first generation New Beetle is junk in my opinion. I haven't had any experience with the newly redesigned model but the previous gen gave my mother a whole lot of trouble. Various electronics wouldn't fuction at times, the engine needed replacement and the problems were consistent and ongoing. This was a car that we could not wait to get rid of.
Huh!!??! Most beetles are NOT diesel. By all public figures, roughly 30% of VW sales in the US are diesel. That would put "most" squarely in the gasser sector.
There's about a $3000 gap between base model gas and base model diesel (invoice price). Significant, but not huge. Looking at real world fuel economy on both for prior models (2006 is the year I grabbed) showed that real people, doing real driving had a 26% increase in fuel economy (31.3 for gas, 42.5 for diesel). Looking at local prices, there's a 4% difference in price ($3.64 for gas, $3.79 for diesel). It would only take roughly 20,000 miles to break even.
Then there's living with a diesel. It's easy. The VAST majority of issues people have with VWs seem to be related to the gas engines. You just don't see people having problems with the diesel engines (I've owned a diesel Jetta for 230,000 miles/8 years and was active in the TDIClub forums for most of those years) with the exception of people doing stupid things. I finally stopped reading the forum because the car is just so damn reliable, everything just plain works all the time. Even with the number of miles I have, the car STILL returns just under 50mpg, rides smooth and quiet and handles well.
As for the gloves, have you looked at diesel handles lately? I think in all the fill-ups I've done, I've seen less than 5 handles that were covered in fuel. All of those were at fuel pumps designed for big trucks, not cars (I don't know if VW still even allows the use of the super-sized diesel nozzle).
The cars definitely aren't slow, sound only just a Tiny bit louder than a gas engine, and if you stay up on the maintenance schedule repairs are few and far between. Then, by using an independent mechanic you can undercut dealer costs by nearly 3/4 (meaning you pay 1/4~1/3rd the cost that a dealer would charge).
As for the oil thing in Phoenix, AZ... on the water-cooled VWs it's a non-issue. I bought my Jetta in Phoenix and put ~50,000 miles on the car in that state. I was testing oil to see how long I could push oil change intervals then, but even at 10,000 miles between changes the car never used enough to register any kind of drop on the dipstick. Doing 20,000 miles oil change intervals for the past 180,000-ish miles we only see about a half-quart drop over that time (half-way between top and bottom of the distick marks).
I'm sure there are cons to a VW... I know the original New Beetle required Gumby arms to replace the headlight (you could do it at home, it was just a ton of work). Ditto for doing timing belt replacements. My Jetta has developed squeaks in about 3~4 different places that I just can't get rid of. The paint does chip easily along the front edge of the hood (though, I did a LOT of driving on roads that were sanded in the winter, which adds to the problem). If you park a newer car in the hot sun, wax drips out of the doors and it's a PITA to clean up (at least this was true of ours and all of that similar generation). Nothing really major, and I'd not even hesitate to buy another VW again. Maybe when this car finally stops being reliable (if it ever does), we'll look for another car.
And that's my take-away point. Most people get tired of driving their Diesel VW's LONG before the car becomes unreliable or unsafe to operate. It's just an appliance that works every time.
The first generation New Beetle is junk in my opinion. I haven't had any experience with the newly redesigned model but the previous gen gave my mother a whole lot of trouble. Various electronics wouldn't fuction at times, the engine needed replacement and the problems were consistent and ongoing. This was a car that we could not wait to get rid of.
VW electronics issues are very common. I've heard of engine issues with the 1.8t, but not in large numbers. My friend had a 2000 1.8t Beetle. It pretty much always had some issue, but held up ok. It started to fall apart at close to 200k miles.
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