Skimming through the article 28% say they would buy another VAG product - says it all really, badge image blinded sheep!

I know a couple of mechanics / garages that really LOVE VAG products, the badge blinded sheep keep them in plenty of customer repair work with expensive bills.

Over all of my 60+ years of owning/driving cars, I've found so much unsubstantiated hate for different brands over that time I've realised that the blind prejudice of others should never be followed.

We have two VW Group cars in our household - my son's Skoda Octavia and my own VW Touareg - the Skoda has been faultless and the VW suffered just one issue, albeit that replacement parts are a modified design so why not use that part in original production. Neither has had any emissions fix issues.

Both of us drive our cars hard and keep them for long periods, 10+ years.

<< Over all of my 60+ years of owning/driving cars, I've found so much unsubstantiated hate for different brands over that time I've realised that the blind prejudice of others should never be followed.

Both of us drive our cars hard and keep them for long periods, >>

Exactly. I have almost clocked up 60 years also. For the last 30 I have owned a variety of smaller Peugeots and have only ever spent regular maintenance on them; the present car (for 10 years) has needed two sets of tyres and discs and pads as consumables - nothing else. I/we don't drive them hard, but my personal experience is that the slagging off of PSA (= French - hate 'em) cars is totally unjustified. Never owned a Ford or a VAG car - no accounting for prejudice sometimes :-)

To be fair for PSA, they used to have a much decent reputation in the 1980s through to the mid 90s, with their great (and easy to own as well as great to drive, if a little on the tinny side) 205, 306 and 405, perhaps to a lesser degree with Citroen.

It was only when they seemingly started to reduce quality near the end of that period (from the birth of the 206 onwards, but especially when they introduced multiplex wiring a few years later) that things took a nosedive, and their reputaion with it.

It's taken them a long time to recover, and they still have some way to go. Everyone has some degree of prejudices or like of makes or country's makes of car, especially if they weigh their views just by their own personal experiences of ownership. Some people (including some I know/know of) also cannot allow themselves to admit they may be wrong either way - often employing the 'I see no ships' approach because their ego won't allow it.

Since 1986 we have had a total of 7 VAG cars, 8 if you include a Golf dad owned for 6 years.

All have been excellent. Only one breakdown (1986 caused by a faulty Bosch fuel pump which affected many brands at that time). Garages have been OK.

Will keep buying them whenever they make a car that suits our needs at the correct price.

But we do not buy if the cars are rubbish. We have walked away 3 times from the dreadfully noisy Octavia estate in 2002, 2010 and 2017. Why people buy those is beyond me.

In the same time period we have walked away from the Civic twice, the Carina,the Avensis and the Auris simply because the cars were poor and the dealers perfectly matched the cars.

I'm as sceptical of this article as I am of anything VAG say.

For a start their sample is going to be massively biased and more likely to come from disaffected owners.

Who knows if all the problems experienced were related to the the "fix".

The article refers to a Polo which I don't think was ever part of the problem. So could I say "100% of the cars referred to in this article were incorrectly included"?

Quite a bit is made of the owner of the Yeti, however they hadn't had the fix done so why are they responding to the survey?

All seems a bit sensationalist and dare I say possibly "fake news" to me.

To declare my interest, I had one of the cars affected and opted not to get it "fixed" as I guessed this sort of thing may happen.

You are right to be sceptical but as someone who has followed this closely over the last two years and have had similar information from many sources there is no question in my mind the article speaks the truth. You don't have to look far on the web to get the same story over and over again for years.

Plenty of diesel Polos are included as they had the fix and suffer the same as the rest.

One motoring organisation on mainland Europe did a large survey, tens of thousands included and the result showed that 60% of cars suffered a detrimental effect, some only suffered less power and poor fuel economy while 40% suffered actual problems. So the sample is biased towards those who have had problems. There are court cases going on in the UK and the rest of Europe over this very subject.

I've had a few VW's and I didn't find them any better or any worse that other mainstream manufacturers - but its worth noting that one VW I bought ended up with me being defrauded by the dealership who forged my signature on HP documentation!

So, dodgy cars, dodgy dealers, dodgy manufacturer and a dodgy attitude to customers - I think I'll give them a miss in the future!

What engine was in your 2002 Octavia?

We did not buy a 2002 Octavia for several reasons. The noise was bad and the rear seat space no better than the Mk 3 Golf we were replacing. The one we tried (and planned to buy) was a 1.9 TDi just like the Golf but 110PS I think.

We bought a Mondeo TDCi 130 instead. Plenty of rear space, boot was way bigger than Golf (but smaller than Octavia) was really refined and was much quicker. It was dreadfully uneconomical for a diesel though, averaged 40 mpg over 3 years in mixed use.

My mistake about the Polo. I didn't note that the 1.2 engine was also affected.