How risky is it to buy first off the production line? I propose a study!

[mk7gti]

I'd say we are lucky many of the niggles should have been worked out with the early base Mk7 Golfs. My 2008 and 2011 Scirocco where as good as each other. The 2008 model was the first batch off the production line...

[Snoopy]

Forum searches are not a controlled test though so its impossible to draw any conclusions.

so why ask on a forum 
I get 95% of my info from family and friends who work in the motortrade who have freinds who work on these cars day in day out. When they tell me something I go and see how wide spread it is by searching the net.
It's often far more wide spread than they are lead to beleive.
VW don't want people to know they are accountants, they want people to think there still engineers.
People still beleive the brainwashed notion of the reputation of VW and quality.
It's rubbish, they don't care about customers, they don't care about quality. It's a white goods to them now and some silly brainwashed sheep will come along and replace any customer lost. As long as they keep magazines adverrtisment up so pay for there good reviews......

[Chris.]

Cars do a number of runs down production lines before they go into live production.
Yes your going to have operators who going to take a bit longer to fit parts.

You always get issues with all the first models that come out, hence the recalls and common issues.

[Bill_the_Bear]

so why ask on a forum 

Errr... I didn't.  I asked the car mags, post here was just to inform you guys as I thought it was interesting.

Don't get me wrong, please post your experiences, that's still interesting.  I just don't think that we can use experiences to make predictions, the sample is uncontrolled and way too small.

[mark@vorny.co.uk]

Auto Express do a pretty good investigative job. They ran a piece a few years ago about BMW's and warranty work and I had a call out of the blue from them after reviewing forums. They were after facts and not shock horror stuff. I was quite impressed with the article they wrote as a result. It centred around TSI bulletins to dealers and how they thought they should be public knowledge. The TSI in question was cheese turbo's on 335 BMW's.

[Snoopy]

so why ask on a forum 

Errr... I didn't.  I asked the car mags, post here was just to inform you guys as I thought it was interesting.

Don't get me wrong, please post your experiences, that's still interesting.  I just don't think that we can use experiences to make predictions, the sample is uncontrolled and way too small.

Do you really think car magazines really know what's going on?
Do you really think they want to risk there existence by telling you the complete story?
Do you even think someone with a degree in English and is a journalist even knows how anything mechanical or electronic even works?
How many people do you think are constantly told by vw dealers its a one off we know nothing about it, its never happened before.  So say nothing and do nothing about it, the general public won't bother. This happens daily, once you have worked in these enviroments for years you realise what's actually going on. We owned a large dealer chain, I worked for many years in a dealership, I know what goes on, I've been there and done it.. Still get to hear it daily..
Sorry you can quote statistics all you want you will never know the truth unless your on the inside.
 Some of us get information about issue from the grassroutes. Your right I don't have the full statistics but I do know what the techs say and are regular fixing as I'm told it..Some of the issues get published but mainly in stronger magazine sales market countries. The TSI tensioner & other related issues was published in a Single page article in a German magaine for example.(the wording was quite interesting VW pr responded as they would. Has it been fixed years later? No.. why because the article is past history and forgotton.  What's VW currently doing about it? Replacing engines or gearboxs when they go bang if under warranty otherwise you may get a good will guesture payment and a bill for thousands...
If its not a saftey issue they will not do any preventative corrective action due to a poorly designed part or manufacture issue. Any real design engineer that looks at these parts that's failing can see why. It actually frightens me seeing the standard of engineering that's been produced nowadays, the worlds run by statistics and accountants.

[Exonian]

I ran a fist off the production line mk6 GTI for two years and it was faultless.
I had a very early mk5 GTI and it was faultless.
I had a first off the production line mk5 GT TDI and it was faultless.
Mind you on all of those cars I let someone else do the running in for me and take the big first hit on depreciation!!! 

I risk eating my words!!

[monkeyhanger]

Exonian: If you bought nearly new for all of your recent VWs then you don't really know how good it was from the factory. If there were any build niggles i'm sure they'd have been sorted before you took ownership and you'd be none the wiser.

I had an early 2.0TDI 170 Golf MK5 and it was plagued with DPF and economy issues which VW thought were injector leaks, then cylinder head casting issues (cylinder head replaced when they found a minor burr after checking the injectors out). Finally a software update on the fuelling system sorted it out. I've had a Polo 1.9TDI that had a raft of warranty issues including a new turbo, new clutch master cylinder and a new clutch (within 4 months of ownership).

Both my 1st (140TDI GT) Scirocco and the current one had issues with boot rattle that were common faults with the Roc from day one, easily fixed by the dealer, but the factory have never eliminated it in 3 years of production since my 1st. My 2 Sciroccos have been the most reliable VWs I have owned from a warranty work cost perspective (I have owned 6 VWs from new), although I have never had a VW to break-down on me and require recovery.

With the GTD and GTI they have no equipment to my knowledge that is completely new and untried, all of the equipment (GTI/GTD styling cues excepted) on them is speccable in the lower trim levels or on other VWs. The biggest unknown for me is the newer versions of current engines in a higher output form. These shouldn't pose any massive engineering issues, because both the GTI and GTD have only modest power gains over their predecessors.