At 500 Miles In, It’s Smooth Sailing
I hit 500 miles in my new Alltrack this week. It puts me on track (get it?) for a little over 10k miles per year, but I’m driving quite a bit lately… historically more than usual. So I’m estimating less than 10k miles after one year. Which is good because…
I Bought a 10k/10 Year VW Warranty
I’m not sold on VW reliability. There I said it. VW has been ranked below average for reliability for the last ten years. But it’s getting better. For a (limited, snapshot) example, consider
2007 Volkswagen Jetta Reliability (2/5) vs. 2016 Volkswagen Jetta Reliability (3/5). You can see it moving up through those model years by clicking on the intervening years’ pages.
If VW reliability wasn’t trending up recently, I wouldn’t have gotten one. But I did and I’m optimistic my Alltrack (built in Puebla, Mexico) will be ok. And just in case I have an extended VW warranty. I paid $2900 for the privilidge, which added a not-too-brutal $40-ish/month to my (72-month) payments.
I was toying with the 7/70 plan, but for 20% more money I got 30% more coverage, so it wasn’t a hard sell. And I’m a car keeper, not a car switcher, given that my prior car I owned and drove for 17 years.
My Alltrack Manual Transmission Won’t Crack 24 MPG In City
Despite the historic MPG average climbing to 22.4 MPG, I can’t hit 24 MPG in any single trip. In defense of the car, 95% of those 500 miles have been sloggy, slow, shift-happy city rush hour street driving, averaging 17 MPH.
