Cars We Drive!



culverwood said:

The Phaeton was the best car I have ever owned. One of the car magazines used to sum it up, "If you exploded a small nuclear device inside a Phaeton the small nuclear device would probably come off worse".

It was solid as a rock and visiting the factory at Dresden (which also made Bentley Continental FSs for a short time) to see the car being made was quite an experience much more than picking up a Mercedes from Stuttgart (which they will no longer allow in the UK).

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I highlighted it in this thread a while back. Everything said here is true. You made a great buy.

edmorel said:

You can get a used one cheap, wonder how much I would spend annually on upkeep..................

Don't know anything about that reliabilty index but I've gone AUDI the last few years and I am never going back to any other brand.

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The RS6 reliability post above has quite a bit to do with the drivers such a car attracts in conjunction with a couple of known faults.

I spend about 4k annually on my A8 and I'm over 150k miles. The car is solid as ever. The only non-routine repair ever was a wheel bearing.

I echo your thoughts. I was considering an S class or a Panemara as my next car but my A8 has been so good I don't know why I wouldn't get another. In addition, I don't know why I'd let the one I have go. I planned to move it along by now but I have no rational reason to. I think this car will do 300k no problem.

dont know why Skoda dont make it to the US. great family cars. but i guess they dont sell well over here either.



Trompe le Monde said:

dont know why Skoda dont make it to the US. great family cars. but i guess they dont sell well over here either.

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With the views American have on VW's, I can't imagine what they would think of Seat or Skoda.

can someone tell me what the concerns with the Phaeton are? Specifically the '06's. I'm looking for a station car when my current one eventually dies. I don't drive that car a lot on a daily basis, so it doesn't have to be super practical/reliable. My other car that I am considering is a Land Rover Discovery (the year when they changed the front fascia and put in the old range rover engine). A Discovery was my first "luxury" car and to this day I believe that it is the most beautiful, unique SUV and it drives like a tank. The current Rovers look like dreck.

Piobaire said:

IMO there's nothing wrong with VW cars it's just if you get a VW you will routinely have to expose yourself to people that drive Bugs when you get service. Also the higher priced VWs are equal to full on luxury brands but you do not get the luxury treatment, i.e. free loaners, premium service wait areas, no association with Bug owners, etc.

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The previous bug had numerous transmission issues that VW refused to do a recall on. My g/f's ****** died at 39k miles and VW did their best to get out of replacing it, even when it was still under warranty. No experience with the latest one



edmorel said:

can someone tell me what the concerns with the Phaeton are? Specifically the '06's. I'm looking for a station car when my current one eventually dies. I don't drive that car a lot on a daily basis, so it doesn't have to be super practical/reliable. My other car that I am considering is a Land Rover Discovery (the year when they changed the front fascia and put in the old range rover engine). A Discovery was my first "luxury" car and to this day I believe that it is the most beautiful, unique SUV and it drives like a tank. The current Rovers look like dreck.

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My main concern when the car first appeared in the U.S. was that it was new to the market, and thus didn't have a track record. I didn't want to take a chance on it having lots of problems.



edmorel said:

can someone tell me what the concerns with the Phaeton are? Specifically the '06's. I'm looking for a station car when my current one eventually dies. I don't drive that car a lot on a daily basis, so it doesn't have to be super practical/reliable. My other car that I am considering is a Land Rover Discovery (the year when they changed the front fascia and put in the old range rover engine). A Discovery was my first "luxury" car and to this day I believe that it is the most beautiful, unique SUV and it drives like a tank. The current Rovers look like dreck.

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Any VW or Audi forum with an A8 section will detail any issues. The platform is solid. The car is incredibly stiff so it doesn't shake and rattle over time, the engine is excellent (4.2 V8). You need to be concerned with the air suspension, trunk motor, tire pressure monitoring system, electric parking brake wiring. That's all I can think of. There may be some more Phaeton specific concerns which I am not aware of.

Any of the items mentioned above are reasonable repairs, but the compressor is expensive and so are the shocks. $1500 for any of those 5 items (compressor or 4 x shocks).

Other problems are random failures. Any '06 will have something wrong, but its part of the bargain for getting a great car so cheap.

JayJay said:

My main concern when the car first appeared in the U.S. was that it was new to the market, and thus didn't have a track record. I didn't want to take a chance on it having lots of problems.

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I believe this car was tested like hell. Its also not new per se, the platform has been around since Audi conceived the A8. There is heritage here. The first Phaeton was '04 I believe, so you have 2 years of problem solving in your favor.

Its a rock solid car. Compare it to any luxury brand of a similar age and I believe it will come out ahead.

But how is it in the snow?



HRoi said:

But how is it in the snow?

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You knows.



edmorel said:

can someone tell me what the concerns with the Phaeton are? Specifically the '06's. I'm looking for a station car when my current one eventually dies.

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This forum http://forums.vwvortex.com/forumdisplay.php?112-Phaeton is the best I have found and is mostly populated by people from the USA keeping their old Phaetons on the road with a sprinkling of us Europeans who can still buy them new. Most problems seem to come from low battery power and the fault codes that occur real or not if that happens.

Hopefully the link to that subforum isn't noticed by the 95% of the people who join that forum to rice out their GTI's



culverwood said:

Reliability Statistics from Warranty Direct in the UK http://www.reliabilityindex.com/

Worst 10
1 AUDI RS6 999.99
2 BMW M5 703.00
3 Mercedes-Benz V-Class 571.00
4 Porsche 911 996 527.00
5 Mercedes-Benz CL 524.00
6 Mercedes-Benz SL 514.00
7 Bentley Continental GT 496.00
8 Audi Q7 475.00
9 Audi A6 Allroad 469.00
10 Mercedes-Benz R-Class 438.00

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Sadly, 90% of these are/were my favorites cars or i have desired at some point and oddly enough 90% of them all have air spring suspensions, which is suspect is what gave owners the most headaches.
For instance, each side on a Benz CL/SL/R class can cost up to 4k per side to fix at the dealer.
My buddy that owns a Bentley GT told me the airspring cost him 11k to fix, i personally think its bullshit, but it could be possible if the work is performed at the stealership. Bentley dealer charges $2k just to open a file to track your service history.

1- Saw a great deal on a wagon one in Japan
2- I still want a M5 V10 so bad, the sound alone is to die for.
3- They dont sell these on our side of the world
4- Never liked the 996
5- Love it. Great deals to be had in Japan on the 2000-06 CL
6- always loved the SL its a childhood thing, but the 03-09 are awful in maintenance, yet i still desire one.
7- Head over heels in love with the Conti GT.
8- Diesel Q7s are awesome, i briefly owned a 3.6 Q7.
9- Almost pulled the trigger on one at an auction. Awesome looking cars.
10- Almost pulled the trigger on a R500, I went back home, did some homework, and read about each air spring/strut assembly can cost upwards of 4-5k per side to fix. thats when i backed out.

On another note, i dont think all these cars were that unreliable. Over-engineered? yes, but not necessarily unreliable.
They're very expensive, and people who buy them are always necessarily car guys, so they tend to not baby them

Top Gear tonight... amazing Merc SLS electric featured. Wow. What an engineering masterpiece.

love the phaeton, such a rare car