YOUR VIEWS
WRITE TO autocar@haymarket.com
Better down under
My Volkswagen experience in Oz, more particularly my local dealer here in Newcastle, has been a bit different than that of Stuart Haines of Kent (Your Views, 28 July).
My 2015 Golf Alltrack had a thermostat go at least four months out of warranty, but the dealer went into bat and I ended up only about A$200 out of pocket, as opposed to A$1450. We also had both keys fail over the period of a year and again some haggling between Volkswagen HQ, the dealer and me got them replaced, as opposed to several hundred dollars each. Servicing is pricey, but my loyalty has been bought: this is my fifth Golf since 2007.
The easiest one for driving trips from Newcastle to Canberra was a 2.0-litre diesel. Less pleasant was a 1.4-litre turbocharged one with a poor seven-speed DSG auto. The engine was replaced and the gearbox seen to a few times – but I solved it by wiping it out with no damage to me!
Tony Sullivan New South Wales, Australia
Used as intended
I’ve received some very interesting data from Ford for the first half of the year, showing that we Kuga PHEV owners do almost half (49%) of our mileage on electricity (and consider some people would have been driving without charging, because of the battery recall, for at least a couple of months of that). This really is a lot better than some have suggested, where PHEVs are just bought for favourable BIK tax ratings. It seems users really do charge their PHEVs.