My son’s Volkswagen Polo gave us some trouble on the return journey form holiday last week. After running for about 80 miles the engine suddenly lost all power (just as if the engine was suffering from fuel starvation) and we had to drift onto the hard shoulder. After only a few seconds, turned the ignition on again, the engine fired and off we set. All of a sudden, another 100 miles or so, the same thing happened.

My local garage agreed with me that there was probably some fuel blockage or even contaminated fuel. I took it down to them to have it checked out. Their diagnostic machine brought up 2 codes: 'vw16726' and 'p0342', suggesting a cam shaft sensor and wiring fault. Would this account for the running experience we had or is it still more likely to be a fuel problem? I might add that the car is just three months out of warranty and has only 6,000 miles on the clock.