Volkswagen Problems

A Volkswagen Golf that is already one year old will already have done a big chunk of its depreciating. The Corolla, on the other hand, will – like all brand-new cars – dump value like crazy. That said, both cars have a fair way to go in depreciation terms. Keeping them for just a year won’t help there, either, as you’ll effectively be maximising the amount you lose.

The trade regards the Corolla (as a Toyota) very highly and, as such, resale values tend to be better than a lot of cars. The VW Golf, meanwhile, still suffers from the stigma of the reliability problems many owners experienced and can be a little more difficult to unload without resorting to selling it to a wholesaler who will make you really understand what depreciation means.

None of the vehicles you’ve listed are exactly low-maintenance units. They all have complex all-wheel-drive drivelines (which will be appreciated when towing a heavy trailer across a wet showground) and they use the latest common-rail diesel technology which is fairly intolerant of poor servicing.

As for a power tailgate on a ute, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. But some of the wagon versions of these vehicles can be optioned with powered tailgates. The catch there is that these vehicles use coil sprung rear axles (as opposed to the leaf-sprung ute versions) so they’re not as adept at towing. The Toyota Fortuner, for instance can’t match the HiLux’s 3.5-tonne limit and makes do with 2800kg; not enough for your requirements. The Ford Everest (based on the Ranger) is a little better at 3000kg, but still trails the Ranger’s 3500kg towing capacity and is right on your self-imposed minimum.

A Golf with that mileage after just three or four years on the road is a bit of an anomaly. How has the car been used? Was it a delivery vehicle in a previous life? I’d be asking some tough questions and diving deep into the vehicle’s service history to find out how it’s been driven and serviced before taking the plunge, because that mileage is about double what I’d expect from this make and model.

The biggest potential reliability glitch with this car is the DSG transmission. While VW claimed that all the evils were fixed by the time the Golf 7 came out in 2013, experience suggests that there are still some examples of this gearbox giving trouble. Symptoms include a loss of drive, poor shift quality, shuddering on take-off and a gearbox that seemingly loses the plot on occasions.

And I’m afraid your alternative rings a few alarm bells as well. The Hyundai also uses a double-clutch style transmission and while it hasn’t suffered the litany of problems that the VW unit has caused over the years, it’s still a bit of an unknown quantity. Certainly, some customers seem to be unhappy with the unit in terms of its longevity and replacement clutch packs are not unknown.

Also, you seem to have a knack for finding cars with double the expected kilometres on board. I’d expect a 2018 i30 to be showing closer to 25,000km than the 50,000km on the one you’re considering. Cars with higher than expected mileage can be bargains, but you’ve really got to dig into their past to ensure they haven’t been abused or suffered from poor servicing.

It would be very rare for a facelifted version of a car to be less expensive than the one it replaces, Imran and, on balance, the upgrade model usually costs a little more based on more features. At the moment, though, there’s no word on exactly when the facelifted Tiguan will arrive here, nor exactly what the changes and improvements will be, so it’s very difficult to know whether it’s worth waiting for.

But it is worth mentioning that you’ll be very unlikely to manage a discount on the new version, whereas VW dealers might be a little more motivated to clear the decks of the existing model and will possibly be a bit more keen to negotiate.

Of course, even if you wait for the upgrade model, there’s a very real chance that we’ll be seeing an all-new Tiguan by 2022 anyway.

The Ford Escape plug-in should be an interesting vehicle when it arrives, with 165kW of power and something like a 50km electric-only range. It will be here sometime this year, but the exact timing is still a trade secret.

The Toyota RAV4, meanwhile, isn’t a plug-in hybrid, so it can’t be recharged form your home solar panels (which the plug-in Escape could be). Frankly, if you’re making four times the power your household needs with your solar array, you’re in the pound seats for owning a plug-in hybrid which could put that excess electricity generation to very good use. That’s especially true if most of your driving is around town within a 20km radius or so of home-base.

That said, the new RAV4 Hybrid is gaining rave reviews as well as recording very sharp real-world fuel-economy figures. But a plug-in hybrid in a household with excess solar capacity could almost be run for free.

The market value of your car, Clare, if you were to sell it privately is probably between $10,000 and $12,000, so $7000 as a trade-in is roughly what you’d expect. It might be a fraction low, but without seeing the car in the flesh, that’s difficult to say for sure. In any case, it’s in the ball-park. That’s how dealers make money on used-cars; they buy them at their price and sell them at yours.

Assuming you’re trading the car in on a new vehicle, the important thing is not how much the dealer offers for your trade-in, but rather the change-over number. That is, the amount you have to pay to get into the new car. A dealer can often flatter you into thinking you’re getting a good deal by discounting the price of the new car, but if they also slice a few dollars off the value of your trade-in, you’re back to square one, right?

You haven’t given me a lot to go on here, Matt. Is the vehicle a dual-cab, single-cab or cab-chassis? Is it two or four-wheel-drive? What trim level are we talking? Anyway, I’ll take an educated guess (based on the price) and suggest it’s a dual-cab all-wheel-drive. At which point, the price being asked seems about right for a vehicle with those kilometres. It does, however, sound like the licensed-dealer price, not a private-seller price. But again, I’m stabbing in the dark here.

Because some Volkswagen products from this era have a reliability cloud over them, the distance travelled is a big determinant of the asking price. More so than the year of manufacture, in fact.

Things to watch out for are gearbox problems and electronic glitches but, since the Amarok is an off-roader (and a pretty good one) you also need to learn how it’s been used by the previous owner. A heavily modified Amarok or one with a lift-kit, mud tyres and a dirty big winch bolted to the front of it is probably one to avoid when there are clean, never-been-off-road examples about for similar money.

You haven’t given me a lot to go on here, Matt. Is the vehicle a dual-cab, single-cab or cab-chassis? Is it two or four-wheel-drive? What trim level are we talking? Anyway, I’ll take an educated guess (based on the price) and suggest it’s a dual-cab all-wheel-drive. At which point, the price being asked seems about right for a vehicle with those kilometres. It does, however, sound like the licensed-dealer price, not a private-seller price. But again, I’m stabbing in the dark here.

Because some Volkswagen products from this era have a reliability cloud over them, the distance travelled is a big determinant of the asking price. More so than the year of manufacture, in fact.

Things to watch out for are gearbox problems and electronic glitches but, since the Amarok is an off-roader (and a pretty good one) you also need to learn how it’s been used by the previous owner. A heavily modified Amarok or one with a lift-kit, mud tyres and a dirty big winch bolted to the front of it is probably one to avoid when there are clean, never-been-off-road examples about for similar money.