As reliable as a VolksWagen

Some of you may remember a particular VW advert on the telly. A young woman comes out of her mews townhouse in an obvious fit of high maintenance stroppery. She takes off her engagement ring and throws it down the gutter. Ditto with the house keys. Then comes the car keys. She stops and looks at them. She smiles and gets into her conveniently parked VW Golf. "If only everything was as reliable as a Volkswagen" cries the ad smuggly.

Indeed - if only everything was as reliable as a Volkswagen. It was a bad omen from the start when I bought my Golf 2.0 TDI. Even before I hit the road I emailed the salesman with some information he needed. When I heard nothing I rang him up: "Our email isn't working." He seemed a bit shocked when I asked him if his cars were any better - but thus history has proven.

I've lost count of thie number of times the car has had to spend a day off the road to be fixed under warranty. The most expensive was to replace the turbo which died on the M6Toll. Rear wash/wipe, the throttle position sensor, the fuel pump (which died on the way into town leaving me stranded at the side of the road), the turbo seals (apparently they were leaking oil) and today the foglight switch gave up the ghost. It's got to the stage that every time the car seems to falter or sound a little different I'm worried that it's going to die yet again. When the AA man towed me in I said to him "The most unreliable car I've ever, ever had - does that sound right?" He nodded. But then maybe "Worst cars on the road" was his sympathetic response to every driver he rescued from the roadside.

That said it's still a lovely car, just unreliable - maybe it's a woman!