Not worth the effort despite what you’ve been told by Citizens advice I expect your chances of success in claiming a new engine on an 11yr old car is absolute zero. If it runs take it to a dealer and part exchange it or sell it through your nearest auction house. Despite the terrible reputation this engine had someone will always pay money for a Golf. Get shot of it and buy something Japanese.
I suspect that the CAB (maybe Brompt can chip in, given he volunteers for them and may have some access to their general legal advice on such matters) may be saying that it might fall under the Eu (now UK) law which stated that merchandise has to be (not the exact wording) of merchantable quality and reasonably last 6 years.
I suppose the bone of contention will be whether this means that a car built in 2009, already past the 6 year period and experiencing an engine failure in 2016 will have that 'cover' reset when the engine was replaced in 2016, thus the cover lasting to 2022.
I wouldn't be surprised if any case came down on the side of the former rather than the latter, as it was outside the original 6 year period (the seller would be under no obligation to replace the original engine unless it was a second hand car still within the seller's warranty period) even if the fault was an inherrant defect of the same sort that caused the first failure.
Some businesses (quite rare) are far more generous in this regard - I bought a Samsung TV from Richer Sounds back in 2006 and it went wrong (sound) in 2008 on a 5 or 6 year warranty (theirs, not Samsung's). They replaced the unit with an updated model and reset the warranty to day one when I picked it up at the shop, rather than it expiring in 2011/12.
In this case, I agree that buying from one of the top-rated Japanese or Korean (long warranties, especially for the powertrain) would be the sensible way to go next time.
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