Older Passat?

[Jmmsbnd007]

Cliffs:
1993 Volkswagen Passat GLX Sedan
2.8L 6 cyl, 5 speed, new tires, newish battery... but 189k miles and a heater in need of repair
Asking price is $1400.

The 5 speed and the 6 cyl are attractive to me, but I'm concerned about the reliability. Exterior looks good; haven't seen interior yet. Current owner is second owner. Car is in good shape and runs fine; if this asking price is considered low, consider that the seller is moving to South America and needs to sell the car for obvious reasons.

I suppose I should mention that this would be my first car. Opinions?

 

[vi edit]

At that age and miles it's absolutely a crap shoot as to what will happen. I don't care the make, I don't care the model. If it's in good shape that's a hopeful sign. If they took good care of it on the outside, hopefully they did the routine stuff under the hood.

Given your position and the amount of money you are looking to spend, it's all about minimizing risk if something does end up breaking. A VW is not going to be cheap to repair. Anything from engine stuff to suspension is going to be a premium over other nameplates. Insurance is also going to be more expensive. I'd probably look to something domestic that I could more easily rummuge up salavage parts for if I needed to fix it. You'll be hard up doing that on a Passat since there weren't many of them. Lumina, Grand Prix, Taurus, ect. All of those sold hundreds of thousands. There are parts abounding for them for easy repairs.

If money is a concern (you are looking to spend $1400) then I don't think you want the VW.

 

[Jmmsbnd007]

Thanks for the informative post, you certainly made a lot of good points. I'm not quite as interested in the car now due to the reasons you brought up; but, I did ask him about past problems and maintenance, and this is what he said:

The problems I had were: I had to replace the starter switch and fix a leak in a CV joint boot (2 yr. ago); change battery and get new rotors for the front breaks (last summer). The problem with the heater is that the heater core has a leak, but instead of changing it, a bypass was done. Apart from that, just regular maintenance, like oil change, air filter, fuel filter... all of this done in a VW dealer either in Omaha or Lincoln, because other oil change stores don't have the filters available. Oil change and 15point inspection is usually about $50.
About the previous owner, I don't think she had any important repair but I'm positive she also had he car serviced in the VW dealer.