After some years of Impreza ownership I decided on a Mk1 Fabia VRS for cheaper motoring while still being a fun to drive car. The Impreza avaraged 23mpg while the Fabia would I thought avarage ~40.

I found a tidy sounding '06 VRS on sale from Westway Nissan. 39,000 miles, FSH, mildly mapped, plus it came with Nissan's Cared4 12 months no quibble warranty, breakdown cover plus a few other bridge insurance type warranties. Great I thought...

First month was great. I was regularly seeing over 50mpg, and even driven really hard the fuel trip wouldn't go below 39.5mpg. I had the timing belt replaced and the next day the turbo pipe blew off - almost zero power and loads of black smoke - limped home, garage siad very common with the push fit plastic pipes to pop off after being disturbed. Fitted a new o ring and self tapping screw to make sure it wont come off again

Then after a couple of thousand miles the turbo failed.

Nissan replaced the turbo under warranty. The bill came to £1400, the warranty paid £1000 and I was left to pay the rest :wonder:

The job wasn't without its problems. Nissan put the wrong engine oil in, so the car went back, with me taking the correct oil to them as their service manager was trying to use a 'similar spec' oil to what Skoda specify :wonder: I was out driving the following day and ~50 miles from home the rear f the undertray blew off that had just been put back on by Nissan. I had to crawl under the car and lash it up to get home

The car was not right on its return from the turbo replacement. Fuel consumption was up, and power was down (~10% on both). Nissan said 'brim the fuel tank, do 50 or so miles and then brim it again. Work out the fuel consumption and then we'll compare it to what the car should be doing'. WTF kind of thing to say is that? BS or what? I said to them I regularly do a 15 miles run and see ~52mpg, now I see 42. Ended up taking it somewhere else - EGR valve knackered

Rattling & knocking started coming from fns corner. Had the arb bushing changed, knocking still there.

Driving home last night and the turbo manifold to turbo manifold 'flexi' pipe broke. Looks like some clown has tried welding it at some point.

Garage have said there is an injector issue with these engines, although this might be covered under VAG group issue warranty.

And I suppose I have the DMF to deal with soon

I looked and read around before buying the Fabia seeing some stories of owners woes, but thought as I had the good warranties at least I would be covered. Since all this happening I've heard of loads of similar issues with all VAG cars...

For the mileage I cover per year the fuel differences of Impreza/Fabia VRS ownership is ~£1500 more, but all things considered that's a small price to pay for increased reliability as all things considered the Scooby never let me down

Edit: Forgot to mention - rear console bushings and split servo vacuum pipe needed changing straight away

Edited 20 November, 201213 yr by bonesetter

Sounds like youve just been unlucky!

sounds like just one of the unlucky things tbh, not had no problems with mine, only cost i've had is modifying it... :p

Seems like 30% of that is nissans fault?

Im sure that was one of the cars I had my eye on when I was on the hunt for a VRS fab. By the sounds of it I made the right choice..... *touch wood*

Injector faults are the 2.0 pd engines mate I think

Ahh i forgot to mention my servo pioe is split also dont think i put that or the alternator problem on my rant Page.

Welcome to my world but with a knackard gearbox ontop.

bonesetter from ScoobyNet?

This is the thing with a seconhand car, you can look for FSH and "owned from new by eldery gent" etc but as your experience proves, stealers make mistakes old people lend their 17 year old sons there cars

Second hand cars are "you pays your money, you takes your chance"

You unfortunately sound like you have taken a few "hits" for the rest of us.....dont quit on on your skud is sounds like a nearly new car !!

bonesetter from ScoobyNet?

That's me

Yay - me Brun

You've made the same mistake then seriously, I think I may either have been unlucky, shouldn't have expected the Fabia to stand up to the same amount of right foot weight as the Scooby, or both

Mine's stood up quite well - 181k on original clutch, gearbox, turbo exhaust and battery

.......although I long for another Scoob

Mine's stood up quite well - 181k on original clutch, gearbox, turbo exhaust and battery

Bluddy eck - nice one. You're doing well. Do you drive with the fairy touch?

Lots of m'way use although not much is @ 70

You've been unlucky with that one mate.... Mines on 142k, lots of motorway driving, no cold starts & short journeys either. My daily commute is over 40 miles. Runs superb.

I gave up at 132k. Modern diesel engines have a capacity for big bills, mine swallowed £2k within three months. Frightening.

Not unique to VW, not by a long shot.

Turbo failurs isnt the cars fault when its remapped, that turbo was designed to cope with the standard power no more. The fact they didnt fix it right isnt the cars fault either.

I drive a skoda because I couldnt afford to run a subaru so really dont know where your coming from their. And lets be fair subaru engines are well knowing for knackering after 60k regardless of maintenance or modifications. Any 1.9 tdi vag engine should be capable of doing 200k+.

Anyway hope you have some happier times with your skoda ahead:)

I can see everyone's POV... the garage owner said to me on a recent visit he used to recommend the Rover 400's (or was it the Pug 400) for the diesel engine they had. Extremely reliable and many happy folk who took him at his word. Now he recommends AGAINST diesel ownership, especially the performance diesels. Says it's one thing after another. If they aren't gumming up through short miles/not being driven 'hard enough' (pootling around on tick over trying to milk out mpg), then there's the list of other big failures.

I really don't know, but my VRS confidence (and most cars, especially performance ones) are well shaken

Probably be the pug 406 that came with the diesel engine! Brilliantly reliable engine! Good for moon miles!

I don't think you've had a lot of luck with the VRS. Though I'm frowning more in the direction of the Nissan dealership.

Hate to mention the "d" word but have you considered an Impreza or Forester diesel? You'd have to trawl s'net for ownership experiences, though I don't suppsoe there are that many of them on the roads.

Hmmm: http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/subaru/legacy-and-outback-diesel-2008/

J.

Well today I had the turbo manifold to exhaust manifold flexi replaced - the flexi part of it had split right through and gone with a puff of air reducing power significantly and triggering the check engine light. It had been 'repaired' at some point - a bodged welding job.

The performance and mpg is back to normal now. It's my guess this had been slightly split for some time and the EGR didn't in fact need replacing... pipe cost £144 to replace

Shame we don't have mechanics in dealerships any more - just spanner monkeys who do what the diagnostic computer or the workshop manual says. A mechanic might have found that fault with the pipe a lot sooner. Sorry to hear it's given you this much trouble!

You would have thought the garage would have diagnosed what the problem was before just 'trying' this and that and then charging money without fixing the problem