We bought a 2001 Jetta TDI from Lithia and it fell apart pretty much immediately. The day after we bought it, a coolant sensor came loose and the system dumped all its coolant. Took two days to get it back. They made us pay for the tow back, then botched the repair, so it happened again the next day. The service staff acted like we were trying to scam them somehow, and refused to give us the printout of the codes from the computer. It took 6 weeks to get reimbursed for the tow.
She took it to Automotion for an independent assessment: the timing belt was at end of life and needed to be changed soon. Timing belts are part of the maintenance schedule in the owners manual, and it flags that part for replacement as part of regular maintenance at 60k and 80k miles. The Jetta was at 83k miles and the repair had not been done, despite their claim that 'all belts had been checked and replaced if worn'.in the fine print of the inspection material they exclude the timing belt, but tell you ALL belts have been taken care of. Not the most important one! If that goes while the engine is running, your engine becomes a worthless hunk of metal and costs $7,000 to replace.
Lying bastards. Replacing this part is a $1000 repair.
We took it up the chain of command and were stonewalled all the way up to the regional manager of all local dealerships, who is based at the Subaru dealership. He smiled and made a big show for us, but nothing was done and we ended up angry and screwed over.
My wife bought the Jetta to replace her Jeep Liberty CRD, the lease for which was about to expire, but after the experiences we had with the Jetta and Lithia, she decided she would keep the Jeep. So the Jetta sat for two months while she decided what to do with it.
My work truck broke, so I took over payments and started using the Jetta. After two weeks, the check engine light started coming on briefly, then going out. I took it immediately to a car parts store - they will let you use their computer diagnostic code reading devices if you leave your ID with them while you go outside with it.'Torque Converter Solenoid'. No bad behavior, so I kept an eye on it.
Long story short, it turns out that if the torque converter starts dying, your tranny starts dying, from the high gears on down. This is what happened over the course of a month. Transmission rapidly degraded and needed to be rebuilt. So much for Lithia's inspection.
VW transmissions are highly specialized and very expensive. You can't even check the fluid! It's sealed, and must be calibrated at temp by a VW technician over the course of two billable hours. Period. Arrow transmission will rebuild a TDI tranny for $3300. Not that we could afford it.
Then a mystery coolant leak developed! Final straw.
We took it in to Allison Automotive Group (Mitsubishi and Saab), and rolled Lithia's Lemon into the financing for another Jeep Liberty, albeit not a diesel. Much happier. I can burn gas if it means I'm not stuck with that thing.
Moral of the story _Lithia VW are dishonest evil bastards who will screw you over as soon as look at you, from the repair techs on up to the management_.
Oddly enough, though, we had zero problems from their Jeep dealership, where we bought the Liberty CRD when the lease expired. The process took a while, because of the credit crisis, but in the end they worked with us to get us the best deal. Ditto for Allison, same situation. It's nice to see some good examples after such a profoundly abysmal one.
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