VW Golf - worth hanging onto or increasing liability?
August 2, 2016 4:44 PM   Subscribe

I'm the proud owner of a 2009 VW Golf (petrol not diesel). I'm the second owner, it has low mileage, has been regularly serviced by certified VW mechanics and has never had any mechanical or electrical problems. It's also a great car and I like it a lot. However, it seems like every second day I see a news story about yet another lawsuit against VW over the diesel fuel emissions scandal.

It's worrying me that these lawsuits must soon affect VW financially. If the company starts to radically cut costs or even goes under, I'll be left with a car that is increasingly hard to service and maintain (for example, parts won't be available, there'll be no certified mechanics etc), and loses value rapidly, faster than an older car generally would.

How likely is this? Should I think about selling my VW now and buying something else? Or is VW likely to ride this out?
posted by Gwendoline Mary to Travel & Transportation (9 answers total)
 
Don't worry about this in the slightest. There are hundreds of thousands of Golfs made every year. Parts will continue to be available in some way for those cars.

For one thing, many parts are made by other companies (e.g. Bosch, Beru, Mahn), especially the parts that often need replacing (I do a lot of work on my own Jetta and only rarely do I buy an actual VW branded part, which may or may not be actually made by VW). VW is huge company and is very unlikely to go completely bankrupt. Even if they did, someone would buy the stock of parts and the tooling to make more parts. There will also always be plenty of parts available from wreckers.

There will still be mechanics who can fix VWs. Even now, there are mechanics who specialize in fixing old VW vans which may be 50 years old!
posted by ssg at 5:03 PM on August 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


VW is 20% owned by a German state (Lower Saxony) and 50% owned by Porsche so there are two very solvent entities that don't want VW to go out of business. Plus they employ 600,000 workers, many in Germany, so as much as the German government might be upset about them breaking emissions rules, they also have a pretty significant interest in not putting several hundred thousand Germans out of work.

I'm biased as I own two VWs (A Golf and a Jetta Wagon) and also would hate to see them go out of business but much like the US automakers getting bailed out by the government I think that VW going completely out of business would be a lot worse than the government leading a restructuring if the financial impact of the diesel scandal bankrupts them.
posted by GuyZero at 5:05 PM on August 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


VW won't go under. It is the second-largest automaker in the world. Worst case is they might declare bankruptcy and reorganize to get out from under some of their debts. More likely, they would receive some kind of favorable treatment by European governments (like GM did) since they are such a significant employer across the continent. Another possibility is that they might be bought out by a competitor.

In all such scenarios you could expect parts to continue to be available and warranties to be honored. Europe is a very consumer-friendly environment, and I can't imagine any kind of situation that would allow VW or any company to continue business while weaseling out of commitments to purchasers of their cars.

If you look at the company's stock price, Mr. Market is saying that the VW of now is worth about as much as the VW of October 2011 was. In 2011, were you worried about VW going out of business? Assuming the rational market hypothesis (i.e., that known bad news and the likelihood of future bad news is already "priced into" the stock), the market seems confident enough in the company.
posted by kindall at 5:07 PM on August 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


VW is extremely unlikely to go under for all the reasons described above, and even if it did catastrophically collapse and wasn't bought/restructured, there are enough VWs on the road that there would be a strong secondary market for parts, etc., for many years past the point at which your 2009 Golf would be driven into the ground. You can still get parts for a Duesenberg, FFS, and that company folded in 1937.

(this message brought to you by the owner of a 2014 GTI)
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 5:47 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I have a 2008 R32, which I love, and I'm not worried about this stuff at all. Aside from the general shittiness of the diesel cheating, like drugs in sports I assume they aren't the only ones who do it, and at any rate settlements aren't going to be designed to put them out of business. The $15B US settlement is about 8% of their annual revenues for one year.

I mean, sure, if you are (rightfully) politically opposed to VW in light of this then switching to something else is a no-brainer, but the practical tasks of owning a VW aren't going away.
posted by rhizome at 6:14 PM on August 2, 2016


I am the owner of a Porsche and my dad rebuilds old VW cars. You won't have any problems sourcing parts or service for your Golf. If VW gets into any financial trouble, Porsche will step in and continue to supply parts (not to mention the many aftermarket suppliers). I think you're fine...there too much of a hobbyist community surrounding these German cars for it to completely disappear.
posted by MultiFaceted at 6:25 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


echoing The Elusive Architeuthis. Even if this were to take VW out, look at the persistance of people driving Saabs way past when they stopped being manufactured. My husband and I drove two up through 2014, finding a couple Saab braintrusts in every city we went to. There are indeed secondary markets, including the Saab guy's back lot of cars declared hopeless to plunder, and driving a Saab became a sort of insiders club. We were quixotic and bragged about our odometers. I would say that my fifteen year old car (bought and sold for $5000) was probably worth more. Should VW go belly up, they have all the markers of this kind of fetish status that Saabs do. Those certified mechanics are not going to disappear. Your 2009 car is not going to become more complicated or unable to be worked on with present technology.

After the Saab, though, my next car was a VW Beetle. I haven't had any major fixes for three years. I am not worried about Volkswagen. We're considering getting a Jetta.
posted by sweltering at 6:49 PM on August 2, 2016


FWIW the Porsche that owns a big chunk of VW AG (Porsche SE) is not the same Porsche as the one that makes the cars (Porsche AG)
posted by joshu at 11:36 PM on August 2, 2016


I would also think that this might be the worst time to sell. VW has taken a massive reputational hit and that will likely affect a buyer's willingness to pay, even though it has nothing to do with your particular car.
posted by rtimmel at 2:57 PM on August 3, 2016


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