10,000 Miles

Early July and it hasn't really stopped raining, but we've been out a few times in the Scirocco and it's now gone over the 10,000 mile mark.



Everything is as it should be so far - well almost. In 15 months and 10,000 miles the only criticism I currently have is that the folding Mirrors don't quite work properly. I'm not sure if it's the mirrors themselves or the switch but either way they don't work every time.

And I still wouldn't complain except that the car won't fit through my (single) garage door without being folded.

First Service

AFY went in for its first service last week. I somehow ended up not buying the 3 year service plan with the car although I had intended to do so. So I got a quote from the dealer that I bought the car from which seemed quite reasonable, and they offered a "while you wait" service which I thought should save me the trouble of getting a lift there or anything...

...I should probably have asked how long it would take though as it was almost 3 hours. Still, I had my book with me.

The car has a couple of issues - firstly one of the rear shock absorbers has a leak. This is minor and can apparently be fixed under warrenty later so no big shakes.

As I said in my last post, I've curbed my alloys, but it turns out it's worse than that as it seems that 2 of the wheels (the offsides) are buckled. I think I can guess where that happened but I think that means expensive replacements at some point quite soon.

The other problems that I reported was with the Headlight alignment and the Bluetooth phone unit. The headlights have not been right from new and the dealer confirms that they were set well too low and has adjusted them. The Bluetooth Unit was apparently broken, and has now been replaced, at no cost. Nice to have that working properly again.
I did get offered a 2 year service deal when I came to pay - not as good as the three year original would have been but It'll save me a couple of hundred pounds next year.

Approaching the end of year 1

It's been a while since I updated this blog - mainly because my experience with the car has been so positive that I have very little to actually say about it. This car really does do everything you could reasonably expect of it.

We had a little snow again this winter - not as bad as previous years but a few inches setted on the roads. I thought that I'd really miss the 4 wheel drive of my old Jaguar, but actually the little VW behaved itself perfectly (in the wake of sliding BMW's).

So at almost a year old I've booked the car in for its first service, and I'm not expecting it to be a big deal - the dealer suggested the work could be done while I wait.

I have asked them to look at two problems with the car; firstly, I don't think the alignment of the headlights has ever been right - they are bright enough, but too low to see up the road when not on full beam.
Secondly, the bluetooth phone unit stopped working. I know the unit itself is under the drivers seat, and it stopped working when I put the seat back to let someone in the back. Hopefully this is just a connection, but I have to say that the hands free phone works fine on my portable sat-nav, so not a massive problem.

Something else I'll have to get sorted is the alloys. I think I've now managed to curb all four - mostly my fault, of course, but I'm not normally prone to that sort of think so the design of the wheels is obviously not very forgiving.

2000 mile report

Miles: 2185
Age: 4 months
Mph: 31.7
Costs: £0

Ok, a little over 2000 miles actually, but not much.

My average miles per week has reduced significantly as expected, and I'm probably at about the 100 miles mark now. Average fuel consumption has dipped again - now 31.7 mpg. I'm still very pleased with that, but will be less so if it keeps going down - especially if it ends up under 30. I'll be sure to let you know.

I am happy to report that the car is still completely fault free - everything works exactly as it should - and there are no rattles or squeeks that some other owners have reported. The car is noticeably loosening up, feeling much smoother through the whole rev range.

Having cleaned the car thoroughly a couple of times, I can see its picked up a couple of minor blemishes - 2 around the nose, one on an alloy and one on a door mirror. None of them large, but all will need sorting sooner rather than later.

So far i can wholeheartedly recommend the Scirocco, it's much faster than i expected, except perhaps off the line.

Fuel Consumption

I'm not really sure what sort of fuel consumption figures I expected to get out of the Scirocco - Most cars I've owned have averaged around the 26mpg mark and the Jaguar I had before this only 22mpg. I checked Suzi's 7 year old 206cc 1.6 that we've had from new, and that claims an average of 33.6mpg.

So I was plesantly surprised to see that the Scirocco has managed 32.1mpg after the first 1600 miles, and that seems to be improving a little, I suspect largely because my driving is calming down after the first flush of getting the GT.



VW claim a combined 38mpg for my model - I'm pretty sure mine will never go quite that high - but I'm pleased so far that so much performance is available for that sort of economy.

But all this leads to another issue. How should modern cars report fuel range? The first car I had with a computer was a Vauxhall Vectra. Nice simple system that reported how many miles you could travel on the remaining fuel based on the average mpg of your last 12 miles. Once (in over 100,000 miles of driving it) I let it drop to zero, and guess what? It run out of petrol about a mile later. To my mind that was the perfect system.

The Corrado was awful - Not only no range on the computer but no fuel warning light or buzzer or anything. You literally had to look at the fuel gauge.

Suzi's 206 reports miles remaining until you get to 24, then it goes blank, but you can see that the gauge is still in the middle of the red, so you can keep going for a while.

So how does the Scirocco handle it? Not very well in my opinion.
Once the range has come down to about 35, the fuel warning light comes on, a message 'Please refuel' flashes up on the MFD and you'll notice that the needle is right on top of the red on the gauge. Fine so far.

But, after the 35 miles or so, with the range reading zero and the needle now firmly at the bottom of the red there is still a reserve of 5 liters, which is effecively unusable. I don't want to run out of fuel - I really don't - but this system is reducing my actual range from 385 to 350 miles.

First problem found, and now fixed.

I've never had any type of car kit for a mobile phone before, other than a cheap phone holder with a speaker years ago. in the days when I was a field service engineer doing serious miles it wasn't illegal to use a phone in the car, not that I did very often. But I did specify the bluetooth on this car to make sure I could alway legally and safely make or take a call whilst driving.

But, the only thing less than perfect I've found so far with the Scirocco was that the Phone menu disappeared completely.

It was there when I collected the car, as I made a half-hearted attempt to pair it with my iPhone - but later that day I tried again with confidence having read the relevent manual to find... well, to find nothing actually. The menu was gone. none of the phone related buttons worked.

I tried a forum post, but I guess I haven't successfully wormed my way into the right clique as my carefully worded question got only one single response from a Moderator, suggesting I take the car back to the dealer.

Well thanks, I hadn't thought of that...

So, last Saturday I found the will to pop back to Guildford and get my dealer to take a look. He pressed a few random button and then declared he hadn't seen anything like it (I forgive him though, he's a salesman, not a technician) and after 5 minutes in the workshop it came out working.

What was the fix?

Predictably, the fix was to unplug the bluetooth unit under the drivers seat and plug it back in. The 21st century car mechanic's equivalent of the three finger salute.

So now it works, what's it like?

Simple and brilliant. The pairing process takes a minute or two, but is perfectly logical as long as you read the infomation screen and the phone messages properly, and once paired the system has found my phone by the time the engine is running. The Phone info screen on the MFD screen displays useful stuff like the name of the phone connected, the signal strength and battery life, and the main touchscreen can be used for dialling numbers, or looking stuff up on the contacts list.



I should confess that I have yet to actually make or take a call through it yet, so look out for a new post called "Bluetooth looks great but...".

Edit 27/04/11:
I've used the phone through the system a couple of times and I'm happy to report it works exactly as you'd expect it to.

Got it! - First Impressions.

So, Thursday 17th March '11, I finally got my hands on the Silver Scirocco.



The hand over from the dealers took only 25 minutes or so, and then a quick drive over to Mum and Dad's for them to see it. Having checked the car over there are 2 minor problems - well one 'imperfection' with the Life Shine - a black sticky mark on the nearside rear wing, and one problem. I specified the Bluetooth handsfree telephone kit, and when I first tried to pair my handset (an iPhone)the menus didn't make perfect sense, so I abandoned the process thinking I'd sort it later having read the manual. But since then the whole telephone menu has disappeared from the MFD. Odd, to say the least. Fortunatly, the Garmin Sat-Nav I bought also has Bluetooth, so we used that for the weekend.


So for the first day we did about 40 miles making about 50 total on the clock.

My first thoughts on the looks are that I'm delighted - I think it looks great from every angle, even where it looks slightly awkward in some photos in the metal it doesn't.

I still haven't seen a Scirocco in Black Oak Brown and will have to reserve judgement until I do, but I'm very happy with the look of the Reflex Silver - especially when its clean. I'm also glad that I didn't spend any money on bigger wheels - the standard 18" look huge and the ride (on UK broken tarmac at least) is very good on Comfort - a little harsh on Normal and noticably uncomfortable on Sport.



I've read conflicting views as to the neccessity to run in new cars, but decided to stay under 4000rpm for the first 600 miles - and aiming to get those done in the first weekend.

That trip was to go from home in North East Surrey, around the motorways to South Wales, and then up to Mid Wales on A Roads, back to Telford for an overnight stop, and then home on a mixture of roads via a few interesting stops.



As it happened, we also got a mixture of weather, from fairly heavy rian to beautiful blue skies.