Since my bro in law purchased his brand new polo 10 years ago the thing has been a lemon.
It has had the entire upper half of the engine replaced as well as the radiator, waterpump (twice) and even the tyres replaced under warranty for irregular wear!
Since the warranty has run out, its been more waterpumps, air flow meters and O2 sensors, heads, broken window motors etc and now after replacing the clutch and the thrust bearing last week, the gearbox is still making a herendous noise like its going to fall apart and they are saying another 2.5k to rebuild it.
Anyway, they get it repaired at SY VW and I reckon he is getting ripped. Anyone suggest a good watercooled repairer? Perhaps someone who can supply and install a 2nds hand gearbox.

My sister bought a new golf a couple of years later and to be honest hers has been SH^&^*T too. They spend at least 2000 a year on what I call unscheduled repairs between the two of them...
They drive them like pussies, so the damage is definately not abuse.

Are all modern VW lemons?

I'm not game to buy a new VW golf or Polo....
I've been buying Mitsubishis for the past 20+ years
and have a good run out of them....

When You see many used Golfs for sale - engine and gearbox replaced...
its not a good advertisement...

Maybe they are all bought by people who never service them??

there are many Non franchised VW Shops about
many who specialize in Golfs... water cooled VWs.. etc..

Lee

not all new vws are lemons ......

I own a 2003 new beetle cabrio and a 2007 polo gti. Both were bought brand new and the only prob i have had was with the window regulators on the cab. Once they were replaced i haven't had another issue. i have had a number of cars over the years and these by far have been the best. Unfortunatly lemons come in all shapes and sizes. i haven't heard of a car company that has 100% positive feedback

I dont think i like the idea of a vw owner bashing vw's.
In saying that i will say i shall step no further forward in yrs than 92 my T3's are just fine.
I think the main problem became evidebt when VW went main stream; but i havent heard of many passats or other high end VW's having many problems.
Could be u get what u pay for.

dont think you can categorise "all" modern vw's as lemons.... just as you cant do the same for any make or model.
each model has had its faults and usually they get rectified for the next model release, sometimes not.
dont think its a case of you get what you pay for either... polos and golfs are in high demand so the number of complaints to the number of cars made is probably the same for the jettas and passats, just not so many out there so complaints are hard to come by...
most complaints around new vdubs is related to the dealership's response to a complaint... usually takes them way too long to fix the problems or they tell you they cant fix it or they f*%! something else when they are trying to fix the original problem. This is doing their reputation no favours.
am on several vw related forums and it seems like its not just here that we have a problem. I was so surprised after we purchased a 2003 new beetle cabrio and found the new beetle forum in the states... the amount of problems people had encountered with the new beetles was just plain scary!.. but - knock on wood - we have had no probs with ours since owning new , other than the window regulators needing upgrading.

Mine runs like a gem, 06 polo GTI.

my sister's mk4 golf (1.6L) had a new gearbox put in at 62,000kms
apparently its quite common?

yes golf gearboxes are a common fault

The Polo gearboxes are a weak point.

The engine is a 1.6, but developed from the 1.0L motor in the 1976 Mk1 Polo, it was bored out to 1.1, 1.3, 1.4 and finally 1.6, yet the gearbox has remained basically the same. This is why there are problems with them

The Golf 4 1.6 uses a similar gearbox and is also plagued with similar problems.

All 1.8 and 2L Golfs use a different Gearbox 020 which are usually very long lasting.

I would never buy one of these cars, or an Automatic one for that matter, but all the others are very long lasting and I would recommend them without hesitation.