Thinking about a Passat

[WanderALot]

My good friend is selling his '04 VW Passat 1.8 turbo wagon. It's in great shape and has just 45K miles on it. He has almost 3 years left on an extended warranty. He'll sell it to me for $7500. It seems like a pretty good deal especially since I know he's taken good care of it and done all the maintenance. But the reliability ratings of the Passat scare me. DW doesn't really have an opinion but she thinks if we have a lot of problems during the extended warranty period, we could always sell it after 3 years.

I currently drive a '99 Nissan Sentra (bought in '00) that has only 110K miles on it. A few annoying, mostly cosmetic problems, but it's pretty reliable and it'll probably go for 3-4 years easily. It's boring and feels like a tin can at times and we could use a bit more room. Our other vehicle is a late model Toyota RAV4.

Would you buy it?

 

[yakers]

Passat turbo wagon, nice design. You know its history and that means a lot, bad maintenance is a reason to avoid used cars. This would be more fun to drive and still a functional design. I'd say go for it, you should get some good use out of it and then sell it a few years out, when it doesn't owe you anything and before major problems develop. Pretty expensive for major repairs but if you get 50K miles and 3 or 4 years on a decent car for $7.%K (+resale) sounds OK to me.
Too bad its not the diesel.