I wrecked one of those.

Remember when German cars meant reliable and built like a tank. Mk2 was imo the last great Volkswagen. All the German manufacturers started building crap around the early/mid nineties, and it hasn't changed since.

I had a 86 Jetta GL, 5 speed, sunroof. First car I bought myself and the exact spec I had lusted after for two years of searching.

One night, my clutch cable snapped, dumping the clutch at a light, stalling the car and leaving me stranded.

Tow truck shows up, and they tow it away with the E-brake on. Kills the E-brake and trashes the tire. Mechanic replaces the clutch cable, E-brake and tire and then says “engine is damaged by the cable snapping”.

I pick up the car and the engine has a new ticking sound. I drive it out of the shop and run over the handle of the gas station tank cover, puncturing a different tire.

Mechanic fights me for a week on the cost of a tire, finally throwing a piece of crap on it so I can leave. Tick tick tick goes the engine.

VW tells me it’s three grand to “rebuild the top end”, so I traded it for a Honda.

A couple years later, one of my buddies drives up in a Golf. Tick tick tick. “That’s fuckin normal man. A tappy valve is a happy valve”.

Damn, that is LOW mileage for a car like that. I have 400k on my 2002 jetta.

You broke those things. of others

Hahah! Hydraulic lifters my friend. Jetta goes tick tick for 10min every other week that I start it up.

I only rock 80s 90s VW. Got 5 of them. Thought I'd post the jetta though since it's the best example of BIFL.

EU cars mate. Funny, most of mk2 jettas here are more in the 100k - 200k km range

Yeah, Canada here. Even my jetta has relatively low numbers on the clock. I work with a guy who has a 2001 golf with 850k on the original 1.8t & 5 speed manual.

Is this the diesel model? I used to have an early 1990s Jetta diesel manual transmission. Around $5 would fill the tank up and a tank would last me almost a month

I had a 92 8 valve Jetta, and an 89 GTX 16valve. I loved my 8v, 16v was a bit of a mess, but that was for due to Digi swap and other mods. I'd love to pick up a mk1 Jetta project. Easily some of the most serviceable cars

Diesel, right? I had an 85 golf diesel my parents got when I was 12. It ended up being mine for college and grad school. 250,000 miles. Had to get rid of it because of an oil leak that had soaked the entire front suspension and would have been too much money. I bought a 1998 VW TDI and it was the best car. Got rid of it at 270,000 miles. It needed too much work. It killed me to get rid of it.

First car was a blue Jetta mk1, 23k km. store in garage whole life, no rust. This was 2006 so just in the early beginning of stretched tyres and slammed with coils. So bought it for €300, part was crazy cheap, bough BBS RM for a case of beer and new lips was almost impossible to find back then. sold it 5 years later for €4000.

I had a gtx too. Sold it. Same story, a mess and no power under 4k rpm. Don't like the 16v that much tbh.

Nope 1.8 petrol. But gas mileage is OK. I don't daily it anymore.

This one's a petrol. 1.8 90hp. I had a golf 2 td aswell. True the gas mileage is incredible, but it lacked a bit of power here on mountain roads. Gf has a 2002 1.9 tdi. 250k km 130hp and 6 speed trans. Beast of a little car (torque wise) and awfully economic aswell.

Stepbrother had a VW Fox. That thing was fun.

I have a n/a 944 and it doesn’t get enough love cuz once you swap the right water pump and radiator on there you’re good to go. I’d take it weekly to San Fran to oc and back beating the piss out of it. And tally valves too but was fine as long as the lifter doesn’t go soft

this is the car i learned to drive in!

Agreed, 8v had much more personality, felt like diesel levels of torque going up hills

My brother in law sold his Mk4 1.9 TDI at 450k km’s. It’s still running.

I have a similar story. I had a Subaru Legacy that died going up a hill. Mechanic said they would have to remove the engine for the repair. Clutch had been slipping so I had it done at the same time to save labour. $3000 later I was driving again.

Following that, the clutch felt like crap. Good when the car was cold but when warm it had a hard time disengaging and the pedal felt awful.

I took it back, they told me the master cylinder went. Another $500 in parts and labour. It was still shitty so I brought it back again and they replaced the slave cylinder. Still sucked, so I traded it in for a 2001 Jetta TDI.

Years later, I get an email from a Subaru forum I had joined to ask about the clutch issue. Someone finally answered my post to say that there was a bad hose that Subaru had recalled that expanded when it was warm and caused pressure to drop. My car had it replaced at some point, but the new clutch kit had the old hose.

Cost of the hose: $11. What I spent trying to have it fixed: $700+

Still the worst car I ever owned. Gutless, bad on gas, and a total lemon.

My first car was a Fox. 1990 with only 100k km (60k mi) on the clock. Might still be driving it but broke teenage me couldn't afford to replace the CV axles and sold it.

Nice

Can believe how low the km's are for a car that age!

My first car was the a grey '86, same as yours. I paid $400 in '96. It was a fun little car.

I really like the car. I had a 1985 Jetta that was a great car. Close to the same mileage as yours. Has to let it go after somebody hit it. Do you still run Bosch CIS (or cis-e)? My VW Fox still runs well with CIS-e.

03 Jetta 1.8T. 358k km. Original clutch failed at 305k, I've had it since 66k, my dad had it since 37k(?).

Never left me stranded except when the clutch failed. Everyone is surprised the engine is still strong, transmission has no grinds, still smooth.

I'm hoping to make it to 450k. I don't want car payments anytime soon.

My mechanic says new Golfs and Jettas are PITA when it comes to maintenance.

Yep.

Many times a car bought by someone elderly will have a very low mileage due to only using it for a few errands here and there. If they took ok care of them, it can be a great buy.

My 87 944 has like 360k km on it. 2007 X3 has 260k km.

Has he replaced the turbo?

I assume he must have. Rebuilt at minimum.

I had a silver '88! Had to let it go in 1999 because the floorboards and frame had already been completely rusted out (damn snowbelt winters). At 180k miles it was still running perfectly.

>Mk4 1.9 TDI

The 1.9 TDI is just a legendary engine

Does this car have airbags? Seat-belt pre-tensioners? Side impact protection? Electronic stability control?

Look on YouTube for any crash tests showing 80's cars vs. modern cars.

It's great that VW actually made a product that lasted a while with proper care, but I wouldn't be driving this on busy or fast public roads.

I understand your point of view, yet I don't share it at all. I have an immense fun driving this car around, whether it be on mountain roads or busy highways etc. If I die in a crash, at least I died happy instead of dieing behind my phone being too used to an almost self driving soulless hybrid junk on wheels.

To each is own, in my opinion all this assistance stuff has made people careless and worsened their driving skills over the years. Be it ESP, cameras, beeps etc. Not talking about airbags and ABS which are a good thing.

Try texting when your car is a manual, pulls right left depending on tyre size, hasn't the best brakes nor any kind of assistance. This shit takes your full attention and the lack thereof is what causes most accidents.

Yep, sure sounds like we have different viewpoints. I prefer modern safe soulless cars that allow me to focus full attention on the road with a minimum of levers to operate. Get me from A to B comfortably and safely.

You seem to prefer having full operational control over every aspect and value that feeling of more control. The hands-on compensation for aspects of traditional motoring is fun for you, but not for me.

I prefer computers do as much as possible to protect me automatically so if someone does distract me for a moment, or someone is unavoidably going to hit me, my passengers and I have a better chance of survivability.

That's nice man, got myself a 96 BMW E39 with 510k kilometers and she's still going strong. Really love seeing others respect older high quality cars

To each his own mate, exactly.

I love these. Hows the mpg on yours? My daily is a 1990 with 286k miles and I get 46mpg

I bought a Jetta GT new in 97' . It made it to 370k miles til my daughter drove the wheels off it. My next door neighbor had an 88' Jetta TDI he bought new. Constantly drove it, courier by day/pizza by night. It had over 500k miles on it when he traded it in for a Jetta Sportwagon

From my experience they still last espacially the diesel ones but regular maintenence is key. Already had a few in the Workshop with around 400k on them still running fine

I really love these jettas had a mk4 Golf as a first car and now i have a MK3 Skoda Octavia wich is basically a bigger golf sedan and love it alot its also super reliable the only things that broke on it were things i did to it

1.8 petrol mountain roads more like 30 mpg :)

crap? bro, the BMWs and Mercs from the 1990s and the early 2000s are very high quality and durable. There are so many on the road with 400.000km and more and they drive like new. In general I would not call german cars low quality, BMW, Mercedes and Volvo are the brands in my country that are very frequently spotted on the used sales market with extremely high mileage and still are sold at very high prices. Its basically impossible to find a reasonably priced BMW or Mercedes with low mileage in Denmark, you either pay a fortune or you buy one with 400.000km on it, or one of the unloved Diesels that are an economical nightmare because you pay 1500-3000$ in annual road tax. There is a reason all the taxis are Mercedes. Further I`d say the BMW e39 is probably the best sedan of its era, apart from rust being something to be careful about, they do last forever. My first car was a e39 and I sold it to my mom later on, its now 21 years old and in a mechanically perfect condition, wear parts break over time but thats it and the engine will never ever ever break, those in-line 6 engines can go for a million miles with no overhaul and barely any wear. It does not even use any engine oil, I topped off 0,5l over 40000km. The only non-wear part that needed replacement was the braking power assist that eventually got weaker and then broke after 20 years of use but gradually and not a sudden loss of braking power. If it wasn't for the insane danish taxation model, id immediately buy another Bmw e39, but the annual taxes are a third of the cars value.