2001 VW passat

They are great cars if taken care of.
The passats are pretty popular so you might actually be amazed at how many you can find at junkyards for parts.

+1 on Trcustoms post, there’s plenty of them (along with Audi A4’s – lots of identical parts on that car) in the boneyards to pick parts off of.

Hopefully there are maintenance records you can look over, especially for oil changes. There were oil slud

I prefer the Mk3 and Mk4 Golf’s and Jetta’s.

An excellent website for VW parts is –

http://www.germanautoparts.com/

They are not that bad cars when taken care of. The service position Moose pointed out is common design for Audi and VW. Follow the manual and take out couple of bolts, the entire bumper assembly and the radiator swings out like a door – Giving you plenty of space to work on the timing belt and water pump. Yes, it takes longer but once bumper is opened up, but the rest of the job is much easier – What other car would give you this much space to replace timing belt? Only other car would be Ferrari V12 – you would have to take out the engine to service the timing belt.

Unreliable? It all depends. VW was the one of the first one to go with high tension ignition coils and they tends to go bad rather quickly (as early as 40K miles) and they received a lot of bad reps as being unreliable. But couple of years later, Honda, Toyota, Nissan all followed the same design – and no one really thinks the other cars are unreliable(even though they have the same ignition coil problems) IMHO all that is just perception, and isn’t backed up by the evidence. Yes, VW was criticized engine oil sludge problems. But as I recall, Toyota and Lexus had the same sludge problem with ALL their product lines and no one really thinks Toyotas are unreliable cars.

There are two pieces of advice I give to every potential VW (or other European brand) owner. The first piece of advice is “Don’t do it, buy something Japanese”. My second piece of advice, which I give to people who didn’t listen to my first piece of advice, is this “Learn how to read a wiring diagram, grow three more elbows on each arm, make sure that your arms are no more than 5 inches in diameter and no less than 8 feet long, and be willing to spend three times more on parts and have the jobs take three times as long”

Maybe all my vitriol for Eurotrash (as I call it) comes from where I work. Every time I’ve tried to work on one, the job has always ballooned into a massive overhaul due to corroded parts. For example, I recently had to do an alignment on a 2004 Audi A4 (which is essentially an overpriced Passat). The design of the tie rods is such that when the jam nut corrodes onto the outer tie rod and you have to actually use more than just hand pressure, the outer tie rod breaks, rather than just not coming loose (like every other car on the planet that isn’t an Audi or a Passat), and then the inner and outer tie rod has to be replaced. During this particular repair job, the bolts holding the outer tie rod to the knuckle both sheared off, so I had to replace most of the upper half of the front suspension. The job went from a $70 alignment to almost $500 worth of repairs that the customer doesn’t have the money to pay for. The car’s fixed, and the last I saw it is still parked out in front of my shop. It’s possible that the customer is going to come in today and pay their bill so I’ll actually get paid for all the time I have sunk into that piece of junk, but I’m not going to get my hopes up.

I don’t care what people think or say or what the problems these cars have.
I love all VAG products and pretty much all german cars.

I agree with dwalmop, I have owned a few VW’s. I live in Maine which is one of the biggest salt ridden car eating states of the nation. The Passats are nice, and do share a lot of parts in common with the A4’s. The motors are pretty bulletproof if one follows the regular maintenance schedule.

If I remember correctly if it hasn’t already, isn’t that motor due for a timing belt change?

Do the research on the car, get records and let them do the talking for you. Otherwise, walk away.

Good luck!

Yea, don’t let all the negative posts dissuade you. I had a 2001 Passat V6 2.8L GLX 4Motion. Yes it was an automatic. However, it was the best car I have ever driven. That car was very reliable. The only reason why I got rid of it was because I needed some extra money to buy my 2005 VW Touareg V8 4.2L. I really like VW’s. They are very reliable and they do build one heck of an engine. I never experienced any electrical problems on my Passat, but I do hear that VW’s do have electrical problems. Nothing to affect the driveability of the car. I have electrical problems in my car now. My headlight on one side blew out, my turn signal works, but occassionally it will blink fast. Other than these nuounces, I love VW’s.