Thinking about buying a volkswagen TDI car
 

Well my with my cadillac getting more and more miles on it and how often I drive and plus with rising gas prices i've been thinking about getting a different car. The car I have been thinking about is a 99 1/2 to older Volkswagen Jetta or Passat. My friend owns a 97 Jetta and personally I love it. He told me I could probably get a TDI jetta for up to a 99 1/2 (thats when they switched body styles) for around 5k total (just a plain jane car) and he told me they get about 45mpg. He's a mechanic and told me the only major stuff you need to do to them matienence wise is timing belts. What do you think of them?

The MKIII model VW's are superior in everyway maintence and quality control wise to the MK4 models.

MK4 just has all the fancy dash work, and electronics, cool lights, all that bullshit, but a very well documented emissions and electronic sensor issues, along with just general electric gremlins in the car.

My buddy Kevin has a gas powered MKIII Jetta with over 300,000 miles on it. I've known him for 6 years, and all he's ever done to that car was change some belts, and a burned out alternator.

Math time!

Cadillac (guessing) 17mpg city / 0.059 gallons per mile
Jetta: 38mpg city / 0.026 gallons per mile

Cost per mile @ $1.80/gal:

Cadillac: $0.1059
VW: $0.0474

Dfference: 5.85 cents/mile

$5000 / $0.0585 = 85470 miles

If you pay $5000 for the VW it'll take 85k miles (7 years if you drive 12k mi/yr) to pay for itself with the difference in gas costs. Of course if you sell the Caddy that'll help, but buying a new car to save on gas rarely makes sense.

Thanks for putting it in really good perspective...I never really thought of it that way....heres my math..but buying the car isn't really worth it..unless I can have my dad's company to start making biodiesel

Math time!

Cadillac (guessing) 20mpg highway / 0.050 gallons per mile
Jetta: 45mpg city / 0.022 gallons per mile

Cost per mile @ $1.92/gal:

cost per mile @ 1.73

Cadillac: $0.096
VW: $0.038

Dfference: 5.80 cents/mile

$5000 / $0.0580 = 86206 miles

If you pay $5000 for the VW it'll take 86k miles (2.38 years if you drive 36k mi/yr) to pay for itself with the difference in gas costs. Of course if you sell the Caddy that'll help, but buying a new car to save on gas rarely makes sense.

I can't believe it "Only" gets 45 mpg.

My manager has one of the new Audi A4 130 BHP TDis. He canes it and gets that sort of mileage .....

And a colleague got a Toyota Yaris D4-D. Doing an average of 80 mph on his way to/from work, he is getting 55-60 mpg.

When he decided to take it a little easier, he actually managed to get 69 point something mpg ... I hate him for that.

The Caddy would get high 20's on the highway, and the TDI Jetta would get high 40's/low 50's. Gas is $1.999/gal, and diesel is 1.799/gal here. So, for twice the mileage, and $.209/gal less, the difference would be made up faster than 86,000 miles.

One of my friends has a TDI, and he fill it up once a month (usually longer than that.) The commute is 20-25 miles each way to school, highway, and he gets better than 45mpg, even when he drives like an idiot (100+ during rush hour, anyone?)

Well i've been looking up information on making biodiesel on the internet.....i've talked to my dad (he makes animal feed) and we could most likely easily start making it for pretty cheap...so if he starts making it.....no questions asked i'm buying the car.......

I had a '95 Golf GL TDI for 3 years and it was awesome. I had no problems with it and it used hardly any fuel. 10 years ago it was hard to find diesel sometimes but now, almost every gas stations has it. Go for it...you'll love it.

Wow, I wish I knew what it was like to get gas mileage in the double digits.

well I did see something in Consumer reports that said that out of 100 cars VW put out durring that year, there were some 128 problems. just sayin what I read. I think they are good investments.

I was surprised that the industry average is something like 102 problems per 100 cars. Granted people are more likely to fill out those surveys if they have something to bitch about, and a "problem" could be something like a loose trim piece, but I still didn't think it was almost a guarantee that you'd encounter at least one problem in a brand new car.

You could get a old (88ish-92ish) Japaness econonbox (civic, corrloa, accord, camry etc) for cheaper. You should not have any mechainal problems with them, it will be much more reibble.

What no one metions about deisils is the horrible acculation and smell. They have improved over the years but still suffer in thus reigen

My two cents

Nah the whole reason I want a TDI car is the fact that it runs on diesel so I can run alternative fuel.....plus diesel doesn't smell bad at all..i'm used to it.

My brother just got a brand new Jetta TDI, and its pretty awesome. He get around 45 MPG, which is the same as those tiny gas/electric cars, but is much bigger. His commute is about 100 miles each way, so the gas savings add up pretty quick. Also, since he is an aircraft mechanic, he can put jet fuel in it, which is the same as diesel, and have almost zero fuel costs.

Newer TDI's don't smell bad at all. I have one, the only time I notice the smell is while in my garage.

What the TDI gets you is better performance than most of those old gas econoboxes, with a bit more safety.

Granted if I had a choice, I'd get a new Prius, but begger's can't be choosers.

jet fuel ( at least the fuel we put in the turbo-prop jet enignes at the shop i worked at) is actually kerosene, not diesel. Although they have similar properties (they are both very "oily") im pretty sure it would not be a good idea to put kerosene in a diesel engine since the boiling point of kerosene is much lower than that of kerosene. It would probably be fine in older diesel engines with lower compression ratios, but with today's diesels that are more "environmentally friendly" a fuel with a lower boiling point could cause damage to the engine.

i dont mean to be an ass, i just dont want anyone to go harm their computer controlled diesel engine by putting in a fuel it wasnt specifically designed for

just to put my two cents in

there was an article long ago on VWVortex about a battery of performance tests that VW did to prepare the new TDI for consumers. They would not release the car until it performed exactly like the 2.0L Jetta.


Being a past owner of the 2.0L Jetta and the 'problems' that came with it, all you have to do is check and see if the previous owner was responsible with the recall notices. Other than that, you should be golden.

Well i'm on the lookout for one now.....damn they are hard to find :(

With luck, you'll find one that was owned by some old lady who passed away.

:)

Seriously

Such a diverse driver base for the car.

:D

Well i've done some more math...i found a 2000 golf tdi for about $10k after tax title, etc...but I would be paying more for gas....now if I found a car for $5k I would be set...also gas prices that are actually dropping kinda makes it even more not worth buying....i just want to have a car that is immune to rising gas prices...

well i found a 1996 passat for about $7000 it has 100,000 miles and its a TDI I'm thinking of getting it.

just make sure they've kept up on the regular maintenance schedules and you'll be fine :D