Originally posted by Dowding
I think we probably have more VW Golfs over here than US. And I'm telling you, they have a great reliability record. 
I'm on my second, and haven't had an ounce of trouble from this one after two years. The last one had a coil pack go on the M25 coming home from Luton Airport, so it was firing on only four cylinders and not all six. I limped home. The VW Assist package meant I could have got an engineer to it that night, but preferred to wait for the specialist the next day. He came at 8am, diagnosed the fault, drove to the nearest dealer to get a replacement and had fitted it and buggered off by 10am. BTW, my current 4x4 Golf has done 33,000 miles, and I'm only just getting ready to change the tyres - treads down to 3mm on all four. The current tyres are... M-M-Michelins! So... a German car with French tyres - LOL!
Little known fact about Franco US relations in 1986By 1986, Gaddaffi of Libya had committed some atrocities in support of world terrorism, and openly declared his support (both financial and ideological) for certain terror groups. A young girl was amongst those killed when Vienna airport was bombed in 1985. So Ronald Reagan decided to stuff up Gaddaffi by organising a raid. And some countries (eg. France) were opposed to it, and would not let the American aircraft participating in the raid to pass through their airspace. Relations between the two countries soured! Two years later, I was on holiday in Jersey with my American wife, and we decided to do a day trip to St. Malo, France on the catamaran. When we got there, the French said my wife couldn't come in. All US citizens needed visas to enter France. She had not needed one in 1984. With a bit of persuasion, they let us in - as we had no luggage and it clearly was just a day trip. And then they admitted the reason for the visa - it was basically just obstructionism that had been put in place to piss off the Americans as a punishment for that raid on Libya.
