I have a misfortune of needing a winter car in addition to my F-type. My current winter beater is suffering from rust incursion and I don't think it is worthwhile to fix considering mileage and age.

Recently I read that VW started selling diesels that were part of 'emission scandal'. So I can pick up 2015 VW brand new car that was "fixed" at a steep discount and turn it into my new winter beater.

For all car guys that frequent this board:

Q1: Any idea how harmful is the fix for reliability, and if there is an easy way to flash back "cheating" tune?
Q2: Are there any issues with modern diesels and cold weather starting?
Q3: VW doesn't have urethia (blue fluid) injection, so you only have your usual fluids... right?
Q4: Are all VW diesels FWD or are there AWD variants?


Thanks!

 

Q1: I don't think the "fix" will do any harm to reliability, and I know there are many good tuning companies that makes tunes for the different VW models/engines.

Q2: My own experience from Norway with a couple of diesel engines from VW (2.0 tdi 143 hp Tiguan and 3.0 tdi 245 hp Touareg) is that there are no problems. Both of them had Webasto parking heathers though, but never any problens when I forgott using them.

Q3: We don't have that in Norway, so I can't say for the US market.

Q4: More or less all VW (diesel or petrol) models can be delivered with awd, a little bit depending on combination of transmission and engine. Usually awd might not be available with the smallest engines. In Norway I would say more than at least 50% of all VW's have awd.

 

Some VWs do use "urea" or DEF. I believe they call it "adblue"

 

My daughter had a Jetta that was part of the buy back. It was a great car. Never a problem. Never an issue starting in the winter though she did have to wait 30 seconds or so for the glow plugs to heat. Excellent fuel economy as well. If it wasn't for the generous buy back offer, she would have kept it.