1.6 TDI SE 105 5dr Hatchback

Overpriced, over-rated, with lousy fuel consumption and equally lousy dealers

Flatters to deceive. At first acquaintance it's a neat small car that drives and handles well. Indeed, it's nice to drive on the motorway and A roads. It's quite comfortable, but not particularly space efficient and legroom is tighter than you would expect for the outside dimensions.Build quality seems pretty good overall.
Now the bad bits: The 1.6tdi has what I would call a grudging power delivery with not much torque until it hits 1,800rpm. This is not aided by the 5 speed gearbox so that at 30mph you are caught between 3rd and 4th gears and the ultra-long 5th gear which is not much use until you're up to 45mph. This makes it great on the motorway where 70mph is just over 2,000rpm but this car is crying out for a 6 speed gearbox.
Now the knotty bits. It's not been without faults. The whole radio, CD etc had to be replaced (fortunately under warranty, you don't want to know how much it would cost otherwise!!!) It's had a couple of other annoying niggles fixed by the dealer, but it recently spat all it's oil out due to a cracked oil filter cap. It was filled with oil and limped into the dealers very gently with the oil pressure light coming on intermittently. I stongly suspect that the plastic cap had been overtightened at the last service and the crack had worsened over time until it failed to the point of spitting oil out all over the exhaust. Smoke, smell and £30 worth of Castrol's finest.
But the worst part is the utterly miserable fuel consumption. In normal driving it averages no more than 52mpg. Driving as gently as possible it will just about creep up to 56 mpg but the stated 70+mpg figure is Fantasy Island. And the emissions fix? Made the fuel consulption 10% worse, so 52 mpg is now 47mpg average. DON'T HAVE THE EMISSIONS FIX DONE!!!
I find the dealers polite but arrogant and impersonal. Would I buy another one? No. Not until VAG can get some decent engines in the car and sort out the fuel consumption.

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