My brother and I are at the VW dealership having just looked at the Sportwagen here (lamest test drive ever, more on that later). Overall the car is mostly good, with a few minor trim issues. We had a semi-frustrated laugh about the quirkiness of the design details and how many things seemed designed to be just that extra little bit frustrating for a home mechanic. Despite that we do like the car. The one thing holding my brother back is concerns about reliability, in particular in the long term.
My brother is the type to buy a car young and own it until it dies. Ideally he wants something that he can take past 150-200k miles without too many expensive unscheduled repairs (to be clear, things like clutches and timing belts we’re considering scheduled in this case). Volkswagen has a reputation for being inconsistent in regards to reliability, particularly as the odometer climbs higher, but I don’t know how unfounded that reputation actually is. So my question to oppo is has anyone here had a VW with six digits on the clock and how reliable was it/did it have many issues?