I drive 100 miles round trip to work 4 days a week. A coworker has a 2002 jetta tdi with 200,000 miles on it for sale. I drove it to work all 4 days this week and got 48 miles to the gallon. Its a 5 speed the interior is not in that great of shape, but everything works and it drives really good. He wants 2500 for it, I was going to offer 2000 are these reliable or is having this many miles on it going to be a nightmare. I had a 1999 jetta vr6 I bought new and it was a nightmare from the beginning. I thought if I could get a couple years out of it just to work and back without to much maintanace cost it would be good. What say you in the know.

Never owned one but considered it many times...best site I found for info/owners experiences was:

TDICLUB

I have a 2002 Jetta, not the TDI but a VR6.

Anywho, the biggest complaint i have about the car is the lousy quality of the electrical components and some of the plastic knobs and handles.

I constantly have to replace little electrical pieces, switches, relays, knobs, indicators lamps and such.

Just yesterday the latch on the glove box broke (again!) because the flimsy plastic retainers were completely brittle and snapped.

My son had a 2004 Jetta GLI 1.8T that was quite good, but we also found some nagging little electrical issues (and then he broke the timing belt and bent all the valves). I think the simpler version and the Diesel engine would be in your favor.

Funny, I posted an almost identical inquiry a couple months back...I ended up buying the car for 2400. I also drive 70-90 miles a day commuting. A week later it died on me at work. Turned out to be a leaking head seal on the injector pump. I'm thinking there may have been more than an inkling of an idea of a problem prior to sale... ... 60 dollars and a few YouTube videos later, had it back up and running. A neighbor lent me his VAGCOM to fine tune it. It's been running great since. Getting 49 mpg. 204k miles.

The only plastic bits that have failed are the clips for the window cranks. It's a GL so no power nuttin'. The little diesel has good torque. Happy so far....Don't slam the glove box closed...

I'm looking at a newer Golf Wagon TDI right now as well. One with lots of electronical gizmos and a sun roof you could launch a satellite through. I've heard that they can have issues with chemical fatigue from too much hairspray in your mohawk, but otherwise perform admirably over the life of the car.

We have a 2004 Jetta 2.0, I agree about the quality of the plastic and electronics. One thing that is cool is the Vag-Com from Ross Tech

The ALH TDI motors are near bulletproof. I love my 2001 Golf TDI. 264K miles and still looking good. Only advice I would offer is to stay away from the automatic transmissions. These are the weakest link in the drive-train, and are very expensive to replace/rebuild. When the auto goes, most just convert to manual and never look back.

I've heard a lot of people badmouthing the interior fit and finish, but mine has held up as well or better than any of the other US or Japanese interiors of the same vintage.

I second the motion to check out TDI Club online. A bunch of guys almost as rabid about TDIs as we are about 914s! Only drawback is you have to hang out with a bunch of Canadians

Gary

Agreed, the TDIclub is great. Kind of the equivalent of this place. There's lots of upgrades that can be done but I just want it to run, and keep running. If I wanna mess around with a car, there's that orange thing in the garage that likes a little attention