Are newer VW's from Puebla, Mexico more reliable now?

[francisr]

Yesterday, I test drove an 09 VW GLI with the DSG transmission and *ABSOLUTELY* loved it!! As eager as I am to make this purchase, though, I've learned (through magazines and through the internet) that VW has had reliability issues with their vehicles that were assembled in the Puebla, Mexico plant and that I should just "stick with the VW's assembled in Germany." Unfortunately, when I checked the GLI that I have such a massive crush on, there it was "Assembled in Puebla, Mexico."

When I asked the salesman about this, he admitted that historically, the VeeDubs from Mexico had been problematic, but that VW had addressed this issue about 2 years ago when they invested a lot of money in improving and upgrading the Puebla, Mexico plant (fully automating it, and replacing the local Mexican managers with German ones from the home factory).

Any thoughts about this out there? Is it still fair to say that VW's from Mexico are less reliable than their Wolfsburg counterparts?

Thank you!

 

[acarnut]

In the past, VW has had a lot of difficulties with vehicles assembled outside of Germany. I go back far enough with VW to remember when the FOX was imported from Brazil; it had many issues with assembly quality and fit and finish issues related to the supply vendors.

When VW began importing Mexican made VW Rabbits (after they had closed the Penn. US plant), the quality was poor. VW has made many attempts to improve the quality of vehicles from Mexico with uneven results. Quality would improve for a while, then go back down hill; currently, VW is producing a better quality vehicle at Mexico, only time will tell if the vendors producing parts for VW will stand the test of time. The problem with Mexico is more than the assembly quality; its also the vendors that supply VW parts for use in the Mexican made VW's. Though most of the companies that supply VW are based in europe, the parts are made locally and often times the quality of materials in the parts was of substandard quality.

Having said all of this, I can tell you that yes, VW quality is up: VW has re-designed some items so that the engineering isn't so damm complex (ok, the EOS, is a pain) and suppliers had been changed for some important items like transmissions. In some models, the automatic is now supplied by Aisin-Warner, which supplies many of the Asian built vehicles. The DSG box so far seems to be doing ok, but parts are expensive for it.

At this point, VW is aware that they need to improve the quality of the vehicle regardless of where its built. The hope is that VW will sell 500,000 vehicles a year in the US soon, with a goal of 1,000,000 VW sales in North America by 2020. If they are going to do this, the quality will have to improve and it is. I go far enough back to remember when Audi almost pulled out of the North American market after having sold only 13,000 cars one year in the early 80's. I don't think that is every going to happen again.

If you are concerned about the quality of the vehicle you can purchase a service contract for up to 10 years or 100,000 miles for the vehicle or take a pass. I think VW is on the upswing in quality; time will only tell if the corporate offices in the US will get with the programme and work with both the dealerships and customer to resolve issues.

Hope this helps, a car nut.