Balance sheet at 30K

After three years, including two periods of four months in Italy (with a third ongoing), a fair bit of suburban driving and regular trips from Cambridge to London on the M11, it is not a bad time to look at the pluses and minuses of my Mark III, 2.0 TSI SEL Exec DSG. 

PLUSES: In general I am pretty pleased. It is a comfortable long distance cruiser giving over 40mpg on the trip down to Italy, despite being fully-loaded and driven often at the 130kph limit. It is very capacious and reasonably quiet at speed. It is certainly the nearest equivalent to my Saab 9000 and 9-5 both of which gave excellent service, but being bought at about 80,000 miles were inevitably less reliable than the Skoda has so far proved. Nothing much has gone wrong, and it uses little to no oil. It is as quick as the 9-5 turbo (ie fast enough for me) though not as quick as the 9000 fully aspirated 2.3 turbo. It has excellent overtaking capacity in the 50-80 range. It looks good in the Pacific blue paint.

MINUSES: (1) glovebox is of pitiful size and distorts under the slightest pressure from being full. Replaced once under warranty; (ii) cheap chrome trim over doors - one section replaced under warranty, and another had to be stuck down more firmly; (3) hatch found open a couple of times in the morning early in my ownership, until I discovered that the key should be kept well away from pressure, as in a trouser pocket; (4) seats not as comfortable as the Saabs - squab too short and headrests not adjustable as I would like, being tall; (5) the lack of somewhere to put small rubbish, except in the optional compartment you can buy to clip into a door pocket, is idiotic; (6) having to flick cruise control lever to see the odometer is irritating - and I only found that out via this Forum (the handbook is not great); (7) OE rear wiper made a noise until I replaced it with a Bosch - main dealer never had a replacement in stock at service times...

In sum the pluses outweigh these relatively small minuses, so I intend to hang on the car - while extending the warranty, just in case the DSG or a tensioner decides to let me down.