Price right?
Buy it.
Or I will!
M’way miles are fine – just be really careful on bushes as they will be wearing now.
Budget in to start changing them, drop links are weak on VAG group but cheap to replace.

Depends how much it is.

I was in a Skoda Superb taxi once that was a year old, I commented on how new it appeared to be and the guy said it had done 130k miles in a year. Driving 23 hours a day. It looked and felt new and had nothing done other than servicing.

I think that it’s age more than miles that causes car trouble.

I’m with that lot above; I’ve had three Passats over the last 20 years and have just changed to a Skoda Superb. Don’t be afraid of miles, there’s no reason why it won’t go well past 200k miles with routine servicing and the occasional suspension linkage change.

I would leave this one. VW fare badly these days in terms of marque reliability indexes. Had a 2011 golf 2.0tdi which imploded with dpf, gearbox and eventually engine failure around 100k miles. I’d look at Honda……

I think that it’s age more than miles that causes car trouble.

I think so too, although to be completely honest it’s bad owners and ‘deferred maintenance’. If you keep on top of them, cars can last a ‘forever’ there are cars about over 100 years old that are still road legal.

Friend of mine took a petrol Audi A4 to over 200k miles, drove it pretty hard too, but he serviced it when it was supposed to be serviced and more importantly when stuff broke or wore out, he fixed it then, not when he was desperately trying to drag it through another MOT.

My mileage is mixed between my daily 10mile commute and longer miles to ride bikes in places.

10 miles per day = not good for diesel. It’ll barely warm up in 5 and be constantly re-gen’ing (my wife’s experience of killing a golf and a mazda5). Good clear out on a weekend will help. As T_r said, it depends on how long you are going to keep it. If it’s cheap enough, buy it. Otherwise small petrol? Leccy?

Check it has been serviced on time and consumables changed at correct intervals. Very little wear occurs in the engine when up to temp, hence those million mile oil company tests. If it checks out and you like it go for it – use the high mileage thing to haggle the price down.

straw poll, to keep cars like this in good order – and Indy specialist garage with patent parts or main dealer?

I’d probably say Indie. The problems with main dealers in my experience:

To get down to a competitive fixed cost for servicing they’re trimming elements an Indie would do (well mine does anyway) things like Air-Con regas, pollen filters on even plugs on petrols. They offer them as extras, but…

To increase margins they will usually give you a ‘free health check’ which on the face of it is really useful, but again only IME they really go to town with it, recommending stuff that’s not really even close to be worn, so you’re likely to ignore the things that really should be sorted.

The downsides with Indies is that once your car starts ‘getting on a bit’ their focus can switch from maintenance to just keeping it legal for the MOT, I had to nudge mine to fix knocking bushes even though they’d still pass the test and not fit the cheapest ditch finders when it needed tyres. It was only 7/8 years only at 95k miles at the time.

We really are screwed aren’t we? climate emergency and someones seriously looking at a Diesel estate to drive a 10 mile commute and someone else is seriously suggesting ripping out the parts that do something to limit the poison it puts out of the exhaust (and this is a pre-euro 6 car so it’s far from clean even with the dpf and egr)

Aside from removing stuff, the op seems to want pay about £8k for a reasonably sized car and had said he does longer miles for biking stuff. Yet, the current Stw trend of re-inventing his op has started.

He’s asking about a specific Passat, for short and reasonably long journeys.

Granted a hybrid or electric car may suit, but aside from answering his actual question is there one that people could suggest that’s practical for the bike stuff, will do the long range stuff and cost £8k or less?  Otherwise, why don’t we consider helping him with his request?

Second-hand cars – it’s all pot-luck and a ruddy minefield. Unless it looks like it’s been thoroughly abused there’s no way to tell if it will run for years without trouble or be a bag of nails.

So – do you feel lucky!

i have a 2011, relatively high mileage 110K good price FSH etc etc when we bought 3 yrs ago, short commute too and we’ve had a lot of issues, EGR went in 3 months, suspension bushings went as mentioned above, another electrical fault i can’t remember and recently ECU issues which due to its position is prone to sitting in water when the gutters block and they are hard to clean as small leaves go under and not out. DPF doesn’t have time to regenerate unless longer journies are factored in so sometimes gives issues and now the effing keys have stopped working.

If 10 mile a day commute is regular I’d favour a petrol especially if it’s had the emissions “fix”. Emissions fix has allegedly been hard on EGR valves and having lived through various subsequent software updates it’s not been good for the car (although may be marginally better for the planet).

I have a 2012 (170 DSG) one that’s just knocking on 100k. It went through a phase of being a complete money pit around 60-80k and I’m excluding the regular stuff like cambelt and dsg oil change. Some similar issues to fenboy up there but no egr problem (yet).

It’s capable but unexciting. Boot space is fairly middling (vs. the Mondeo it replaced).

I sympathize with Simon’s viewpoint but EVs and HEVs have some serious social and environmental issues attaching to them too (and when I last looked a few years ago towbar homologated options in the 2nd hand space were thin on the ground). Right now I’m sitting and waiting it out, squeezing as much economy out of my diesel while cutting out as many car journeys as possible. If I can cut a third off my annual mileage then that’s positive socially, economically and environmentally (subject to where trains are getting electricity from!). I could change the car too but that’s a level of expense that I cannot tolerate right now so I’m tackling my emissions a different way.

Back OT….

As for servicing mine goes to a great little independent. I actually really like our local main VW dealer, lovely staff, helpful and sensibly close to work but once the 3year goodwill programme on the emissions fix ran out I went back to the indie as it’s better vfm on an older car.

Indy specialist garage with patent parts

I tend to buy branded parts online, I try to get whatever brand the manufacturer uses. Many horror stories about the cheapo options. For example, I put Sachs shocks on the Passat and they are beautiful and supple. Regained a lot of that new car smoothness over bumps. Worth the money IMO if the car is being used long distance. Cost about 80% more iirc but way cheaper than a new car…

I’d be buying online and asking a garage to fit. Shouldn’t be an issue given they usually invoice parts and labour separately. The few times I’ve done it they didn’t complain.

As for being green, I need to find the article but a group Loughborough Uni identified the VW. Tdi 2000-2010 as the greenest aground car you can have, over whole life etc… And the local Met Office boffins all reckon a good diesel is far better for the environment (lowest CO2) than anything else.
Still all points of view are now valid…

I’ve just bought a skoda superb 2.0tdi and it takes a good 3-4 miles to get up to temp

Oil temp or coolant temp? Coolant reaches temperature very quickly. I’d be suprised if the oil was reaching ‘normal’ temperature in 3-4 miles on any diesel engine. In winter, it’s more like 10 miles/15 mins of steady driving for the oil to be fully heated (>80°C).

Oil temp or coolant temp? Coolant reaches temperature very quickly. I’d be suprised if the oil was reaching ‘normal’ temperature in 3-4 miles on any diesel engine. In winter, it’s more like 10 miles/15 mins of steady driving for the oil to be fully heated (>80°C).

Very much this! Minimum 7km (4.5m) in my 1.6tdi Karoq until 55C shows on the insruments. That gets me on the motorway then it doesn’t get up to 95C+ until about 20km regardless of the weather.