Were there any years of the (new) Beetle that weren't utterly hopeless in terms of reliability? Daughter turns 16 next year and so badly wants one. I'm pretty much set on saying no, because I don't want her becoming best friends with tow truck drivers. Just confirm for me that I'm correct in my thinking, please.
It is not that they were unreliable. It's that the people bought them because they were cute accessories and didn't understand that cute doesn't mean cheap to operate.
The funny thing is, every customer I have had with a TDI did meticulous maintenance and they had zero problems. Gasoline fed cars usually had warning lights on, trashed interiors, missing undertrays, etc.
The A4 platform is pretty solid generally. It's a funny looking golf. I'm all about it.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Innnnnnteresting... I've got a line on a early 2000's TDI New Beetle 5spd that was the learner for an acquaintance's eleventy-billion kids. I've got one daughter turning 16 today, another that will turn 16 in a year and a half, and a third another year after that (eek!). My current Deutschediesel experience has me a little uninspired to take a leap like that, but maybe it's worth considering. These folks have had nothing but German diesels in their driveway for the last couple decades or so and they're happy with them, so maybe that's not the horrible idea I thought it might be.... Upside: if I want to talk to them about it, the best way to reach them is to visit the brewery that they own!
Another upside is that if your kids develop the need for speed, nobody else on the road will ever know.
There are many perfectly nice tow truck drivers out there.
In reply to wae :
I cleaned a lot of intake manifolds on those. I have scooped/shoveled/scraped a full quart of carbon out of them, which is a trick since they are designed a lot like the ones on your Mercedes.
The VNT mechanisms seize up, too, which is a turbo/manifold replacement. They get real slow when that happens, either one really.
In reply to wae :
If it's a 99-03 it's the bulletproof ALH. If it's an 04-06 it's the BEW which are fine, but eat camshafts if you use the wrong oil.
ProDarwin said:Another upside is that if your kids develop the need for speed, nobody else on the road will ever know.
Oh, I will and document it 
buzzboy said:In reply to wae :
If it's a 99-03 it's the bulletproof ALH. If it's an 04-06 it's the BEW which are fine, but eat camshafts if you use the wrong oil.
ALH? BEW?
In reply to SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) :
VW engine codes from that timeframe were three letter. ABA, AAN, etc.
They used to be two letter like PL, 3B, but ran out of combos. Now, they are four letter but somehow sometimes ignore the first letter...
SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) said:buzzboy said:In reply to wae :
If it's a 99-03 it's the bulletproof ALH. If it's an 04-06 it's the BEW which are fine, but eat camshafts if you use the wrong oil.
ALH? BEW?
Able to Leave Home / Broken, Engine Work?
Slippery said:ProDarwin said:Another upside is that if your kids develop the need for speed, nobody else on the road will ever know.
Oh, I will and document it
Further proof that turbo twists make everything look better!
We had a 2005 Beetle. I hated it every day, but my wife loved it. Bought from 2nd owner at 48k. Had some little things fixed here and there under warranty. At the 60,001 mark all hell broke loose. All four window regulator crapped out in a 3 month window. The air bag computer crapped out. The LH rear tail light went through bulbs like a fat guy eating Cheetos. The top mechanism popped a few supports thus rendering it immobile. I did get a third party warranty for it which covered most of the out of warranty repairs.
The the final straw was the automatic transmission valvebody ate itself as documented here: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/who-is-the-vw-tech-here/14565/page1/
We sold it at 72k for pretty much what we owed on it (lost a ton of $$$) and were happy to be done with it. I giggled like a maniac as the new owner drove off.
SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) said:Were there any years of the (new) Beetle that weren't utterly hopeless in terms of reliability? Daughter turns 16 next year and so badly wants one. I'm pretty much set on saying no, because I don't want her becoming best friends with tow truck drivers. Just confirm for me that I'm correct in my thinking, please.
I mean, the ones shaped like Porsches are pretty fun, but you knew that.
If your driver crashes it, it's instant junk. They are one of the most miserable cars for an auto body shop to deal with. Body parts are expensive. Replacing a headlight is a half-day affair you won't ever want to do again. And if anything impacts the front end the radiator support will break.
As an insurance adjuster, I despise these things but they are now old enough they gloriously just go to the junkyard instead of getting fixed.
In the same spot with my 16yo. She has money but not enough apparently to find one in both good mechanical or cosmetic condition. I can buy a mk5 rabbit/gti for similar money and have less headache.
I thought AAZCD's threads were relatively informative about the pitfalls/opportunities of cheap New Beetle ownership?
I fully intend to give her my Prius C, I'm about to spend $2200 putting a very low mileage engine and trans into it. I just wanted to confirm that any Beetle is a bad Beetle.
And the RUF ones are the baddest of the bunch. You could do a his and hers and slip it past the wife?
My mom bought a 5 cyl convertible, manual trans brand new in 06 dailied it for 5 or 6 years and then gave it to my sister who dailied it for 6+ more years and then kept it as a good weather car until 2020. I don't think my mom had any issues whatsoever with it. In my sister's ownership it ended up in the shop on a relatively frequent basis with CELs but it was never anything major if memory serves. Some service can be expensive because of packaging though. The alternator, for instance, is a pretty time intensive job.
In reply to SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) :
She wants a Bettle, they are cute and often colorful.
Is a Fiat 500 a reasonable alternative? Come in colors and some think they are cute. I'm not sure that Fiat trumps VW on reliability 
but it at least opens up more choices. A plain, non-turbo 1.4L might less engine stress than a turbo version. The Fiat 500 is banned from autox due to height/width but it might still be a fun/cute commuter which returns good mpg too.
I feel like Fiat 500's should be inexpensive due to the whole orphaned brand issue. I realize nothing is cheap but I personally feel like Fiat 500's should retail for $3k w/100k. Sadly, they are probably $6k+
John Welsh said:In reply to SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) :
Is a Fiat 500 a reasonable alternative?
NO
Bolded because GRM forum does not have option to change font size 
Fiats tolerate lackadaisical maintenance in a way that makes 00s VWs look like 80s Toyotas.
They literally stop running if you do not check/change the oil often enough. And the rest of the car is cruddy too.
My ex-GF (biker chick) has a 2016 Beetle convertible Denim Edition which she (of course) calls Levi. She's up to almost 100k on it and in the 5 years I've known her, I don't think she's had a single thing wrong with it. She called me one day because a light was on the dash which I noticed was low coolant so I topped it off with water. She was concerned about a leak and I had to explain to her that 100k miles is a miracle she only had a couple tablespoons of water missing. Having said that, it is a whopping pile of E36 M3 IMO. It has the 2.0T which is peppy, but the way VW does their automatics it's almost like they use some kind of PWM signal to make it act more like a CVT and it's frustrating as hell. The brakes are nothing short of wacko. One has an expectation when they get in a vehicle that the brake pedals will all be at least vaguely similar in effort and travel. You can go from a GMT400 to a BMW E90 and at least expect that you won't either ram into the car in front of you because they're way stiffer, nor do you expect to lock up the brakes because they're way less effort. In the Beetle, the slightest whiff of pressure on the pedal causes nearly instant and aggressive brake application, and it has been that way since new. About once a month, the car will be in the garage, locked, and the keys in her purse, and the radio will suddenly come on for no reason. We would be watching TV or making dinner and all of a sudden... random music from the garage.
The 2013 Fiat 500 I borrowed for a week was a fun, peppy car as long as you get the 1.4L over 3500 rpms. The shifter was sloppy and the clutch was a mess. The distance from where it started to engage until it was fully engaged was about the size of Texas. It had the typical punishing and loud ride one would expect, and even though the Beetle is a rag top, it feels like a Mercedes compared to the 500. Consistent "check running lights" and "check stop lamps" on the dash despite changing them... and get this.... They are 1157 bayonet bulbs. Not 3157 or something decent... they are old-fashioned push and turn stop lamps.
The Beetle feels like a finely-executed German car should, but with all the electrical gremlins that a German car is expected to have. The Fiat felt like a tupperware with wheels, but a remarkably well-assembled tupperware.
I can safely say that if I were in the market for either the Fiat or the Beetle, I would promptly choose the Mazda. If you're looking at the Crayola years of Beetle (the first "new" beetle with the interior that turned into sticky wax that smelled like a crayon box), you're ahead of the game if you stab your eyes out with a fork so you can't drive. Ok, maybe not that bad, but 98-03 VW is about the only thing that kept our repair shop profitable. Parts are highly proprietary, most of the rights are still held by VW, and a oil breather hose was $181 wholesale in 2008. The ovate o-ring fitting on one end and the oval snap fitting on the other end meant it wasn't something you could replace with $4 of generic rubber hose, and the VW piece was made from the same plastic as split wire loom that started to degrade in minutes. They also had the lovely 6-million-point diagnostic ECMs that monitored the power seats, windows, radio, and HVAC. If you didn't know what you were doing, installing an aftermarket radio caused - not only a CEL - but it defaulted pin #7 in the ALDL to 12v instead of 5v. Best case scenario was no communication with the scanner. Worst case was a fried scanner. Don't even get me started on timing belt changes that required removing a 5" wide motor mount through a 3/4" space, or A/C compressors that the book says you have to remove the front bumper... and fenders because they're all one piece... to get to it.
Fun cars, and not quite as apocalyptic as I paint them to be, but they can be seriously frustrating. You get a CEL frequently and you pray that it's a small evap leak that can be fixed with a new gas cap, because most of the other CELs are several hundred dollars at the VW parts counter to fix. Again... not the end of the world, but VW is a master at making sure you open the bigger wallet at their parts counter instead of pocket change at Auto Zone.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:John Welsh said:In reply to SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) :
Is a Fiat 500 a reasonable alternative?
NO
Bolded because GRM forum does not have option to change font size
Fiats tolerate lackadaisical maintenance in a way that makes 00s VWs look like 80s Toyotas.
They literally stop running if you do not check/change the oil often enough. And the rest of the car is cruddy too.
Even when they are maintained they are questionable. My NEW 500 spent more time in the shop than my 200,000 mile $500 beater crown vic which I luckily kept around to have something to drive while the Fiat was in the shop.
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