It's dead, Jim....

How many miles has it done?

67k.

Around the same as all the others when they broke.... with the same symptoms.

Rubbish!

Should have got yourself a nice reliable Alfa ;)

Should've got a Mondeo...

:p

OTOH, it's not yours as I remember so it's not like you'll be footing the bill or aren't you that lucky?

You're right.

But I'm kind of stuck in Peterboghorror without a car at the moment.

Any idea what they'll give you while it's fixed?

When someone crashed into my company Astra back when, the body shop gave me a Toyota Yaris to use, which some bellend reversed into about 20 minutes after I picked it up...

Absolutley - 120K on mine and I've just had the first 'oh bugger' failure, clutch slave cylinder (£170 quid, fitted)

NOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo............

Puegeot 206 1.1 litre plastic gutless wonder no doubt.

Well, I organised a hire car at 8am this morning.

I got....

A new shape Bravo Multijet diesel thing.

Not sure on the spec, it says 120T on the side, so I'm assuming it's the basic 120bhp diesel in basic spec.

It's actually rather good.

Paging Tim Kemp, the man with about twenty similar stories.......

Peter

Should have demanded a pikey toyota. The diesels work quite well.

Good points - Jansen Hong shop. Bad points - everything else.

Come to think of it, I saw many, many broken down Passats in Italy as well.

It's a cheap crap generic Bosch lifter pump which feeds diesel to the high pressure pump under the bonnet. They are sucking up s**te from the bottom of the tank and getting blocked. Which is why the 'hit it with a big hammer' trick worked first time it broke, but when it did the same

60 miles later, I decided I'd be better off getting it towed in.

The thing is, much as I like the Passat, and thought I'd escaped all the hassles my colleagues have had by looking after it.... it has still broken like almost all the rest have. Not so keen on having another now. In fact, not so keen on having another VW, to be honest, 'cos the alternatives are just shorter versions of the same oily bits.

The alternatives are a Seat Leon, which will have the same issues, a Superb, which is kind of tempting 'cos they're 5.5 based, loaded with kit and probably better built than the VW B6, but doesn't drive as well.... or, I change brands and look at the Volvo V50. However, lease rates on them are a bit steep, so the engine offered is the PSA based

1.6HDI - which sounds terribly small for a V50. Still tempting, but do I really want a PSA engined Ford with a different badge? Strangely, we don't get the option of a Ford or Vauxhall, but the next band up get the option of a fully loaded Mondeo - if they get that, why don't we get the Zetec, or similar? - must be down to lease rates and depreciation.

Italian! You must be over the moon ;)

Still, as it was such a nice place to be, at least it was comfortable wait for recovery. I've heard you can spend 4 hours a day they without any aches.

"If only everything in life was as reliable as a Volkswagen"

Peter

In my life they are. Which is a problem.

Fraser