VW water pump failures - Engine exploding.

Opinions: 80,000 miles is a bit brief, but have you done the concurrent services that are needed? Timing belt? Tensioner? Usually the water pump is done at this point as well, and usually that point is ~70,000 and varies miles. Yes, it is a little much for VW to expect that water-pumps are to be treated as expendible parts, but that seems to be the way of it these days.

Then: When something overheats, there is either a gauge or an idiot light to give warning. In the case of your Beetle, did the warning light go off? It is in the upper-right of your instrument cluster. When it went off, did you pay attention to it?

If this actually happened without any warning, then I suggest you get on the phone to your Zone Manager soonest. My wife's experience with various pre-mature failures in her TDI Beetle was that after some persuasion, VW came through and fixed it. In her ~75,000 miles before she traded it in on a Saab 9-5 (grandchildren (babies) do not do well in the back seat of a Beetle) that included a fuel pump, both windows, operators, switches and motors (they shattered one day while the car was sitting in the garage), her radio (twice), a fuel distribution rail, alternator and a few other miscellaneous parts. Most all of it past warranty.

Peter Wieck Wyncote, PA

LOL , you had a low coolant condition and continued to drive it cuz you're in a tee shirt , it's cold and dark out. You cooked the engine, now you want vw to pay? A tow home from where you first put coolant into it that night would have cost what?

A tad harsh, yes, but I'm going to have to agree. Yes you were in a crappy situation but there is such a thing as being in the wrong place at the wrong time and it sucks but VW is hardly to blame. You drove the car home with little/no coolant and cooked it. Unfortunate, yes. VW's fault? No.