Ferdinand Porsche invented the VW... not Adolf Hitler.

I dunno. They might be evil.

VW may have been "cheap and reliable" years ago, the
simple folks (volks) car.

But their AUDI division began to sing its song to me more
than a decade ago, and now I have an S4 Avant (which is
really a Passat, with a 2.7L twin-turbo'd motor) and though
things rarely go wrong with it, when they do you expect to
part with about four times what it used to cost to rebuild
the whole engine on a micro-bus. It's an 'exotic' car wrapped
in a station-wagon body.

First (test) drive's free.

Then again, there was the guy who tried to out-run and out-corner
me on the two-lane off-ramp with his silly little Honda Civic.
'Sport coupe' drivers in America really HATE to get creamed by
a station-wagon.

Durn thing gets 25-36 MPG in quiet mode, and will hit 150MPH+
when angry, carry a 27-inch TV set in the back, or two kayaks or
a load of lumber on the roof racks, 'walk' a Corvette in the
damp (Quattro).

If it weren't for the low ground-clearance, it would kick the
FJ Cruiser's butt in the snow--- a complete idiot can make a
Quattro (with snow tires) work in snow and ice. See 'All Road'
for the solution to the ground-clearance. Too bad the Q8 is such
an unreliable piece of junk, as is the VW Toureg; they're fitted
with the best AWD system on earth.

Only things bad I'll say about it is the cost of fixing it (true
of VW's too) and the fact that it rides like a buck-board, requires
a deft touch to avoid discomforting the passengers on stopping
and starting, and generally acts like an 'S' anything.

My A4 was considerably tamer--- but not cheaper.