Bluemotion Highline 1.6tdi

Not what we expected

We used my retirement fund to buy this rather expensive but well built car. We wanted a good cruiser to wander about in for our old age and thought it would last us the rest of our lives. It has been a disappointment. It is very well finished with nice quality materials though the dash does rattle annoyingly. It does look nice in its pearlescent paint. Its roadholding is very good and it does handle well though the Continental tyres are poor - Avon ZV5s massively improved the feel and character of the drive.
The down side is that it is old fashioned, noisy and dreary to drive:
1. Lots of thumps through the suspension into the cabin - this is really annoying. The cabin amplifies these as though sitting inside a guitar body that is being hit with a pencil.
2. There really is little or no floor pan insulation from the road so that country roads (eg A68) make the car buzz loudly and one's ears need to recover for some hours after a long journey.
3. Though the engine is quite pokey for a small diesel it intermittently suffers running problems which VW won't even attempt to sort out ('the VW warranty only covers engine faults that are logged in the on board computer', buy your diesel somewhere else, do longer journeys etc.).
4. The car has had bodywork issues.
5. Front discs are scored after 12,000 miles though pad wear is minimal. We were told this is caused by driving on roads!

Report as offensive