Diesel vs Petrol debate! Audi A3 1.2TFSI OR 1.6tdi??

[smart]

Evening all

Non retro question I know but you guys are more knowledgeable than the average angry keyboard warriors that fill most forums!

So my parents are looking at Audi A3 sport backs as the grand children don’t fit in mums Peugeot 107 and dads Series 3 Land Rover is about to receive some much needed tlc

They have a budget of £7500-8500 which buys a 12/13/14 plate car.

Dads choice is the 1.6 TDi. He’s always had diesels since the 90’s none of which have caused him any grief. Mainly because non of them have been common rail, had DPF or dual mass flywheels. Mk2 Astra 1.6D, Peugeot 405 and 406 1.9 TD, Rover 400 L series, various 2500cc non turbo pick ups and the Perkins prima in his landrover!

This is where my argument that the 1.2 TFSi would be better comes in. 90% of the 8000 miles they do a year will be spent by my Mum will be pottering around town at 30mph. I agree the 1.6 TDi will save them a few hundred pounds a year in tax and fuel but one common ‘modern’ diesel fault and the get a huge bill that negates that saving?

What do you guys think? Anyone know anything ref the 1.2 tfsi VAG engine ?

[Phil H]

Petrol for that usage pattern 100%. Fuel costs will probably be very similar to be honest (as the petrols warm up so much quicker) and no issues with clogged DPFs. There are long-running threads on VAG forums between the 1.2TSI and 1.6TDI and unless you're doing over 12k a year (and long runs at least once a week), go petrol.

I've been running VAG TSi/TFSI engines for a while - had issues with the twincharger ones (one was VW's fault specifying the wrong plugs at service time, and the other was a loss of part of a valve), but the 1.2 - there's two different ones about; one has belt and one has chain drive; one had some early issues but I can't remember which one it was. They should have been all sorted by now though.

Not exactly 100% comparable, but I run a Leon with the 1.4ACT TSi engine and struggle to get below 50mpg. A colleague runs a Golf 2.0 TDI of the same vintage and can't get much more than 40mpg with a very similar usage pattern. Modern diesels only seem to get decent mpg figures now on a long run, driven like Miss Daisy (and then you have DPF regen issues as it's not driven hard enough for the DPF to self-regen as it should).

[pow]

Forget the whole diesel scare mongering - they left the non-new diesels alone and I bought and am seeing significant savings in my 1.9CDTI Signum after they raged a war on the diesels. Yes I can't drive it into London after April but I can count the number of times I've done that on one hand. It's used for long distance and towing duties, not inner city driving.

If 90% of the mileage is in town, I'd go for the petrol. Diesel's don't get the economy they claim around town and driven sensibly the A3 will be better in the long run.

How many miles a year does it do?

[joem83]

Petrol every time.

Both the Golf Plus and the Volvo are diesel (I don't actually care for diesel's though lol) the Golf is a pre dpf 1.9tdi and the Volvo is a DPF model.

I'm using my D5 for coming to work and pottering about, so 3 miles each way. The DPF clogs once a month, then I have to waste 30 minutes of my life going up and down a local bypass until it's cleared.

Honestly modern diesels are a complete pita unless you travel for 30 minutes a week on a motorway at 3k.
The Golf is actually pretty good in comparison, used pretty much the same as the Volvo but no issues.

A guy at work has a CRV with the DPF, he has moved house so is now actually further away but he no longer comes down the dual carriage way and his DPF blocks once a month & his commute is 12 miles each way.

Also just to add, my D5 isnt much better on fuel than my old mk5 golf gti was on the same commute - maybe 2-3mpg better.

[vitesseefi]

Avoid diesel unless you do decent out of town mileages. TBH, although a long time Audi/VW owner (pre 2000!) I'd avoid VAG or any German car maker product since about 2000, as they just have too many serious inherent design/production defects. Buy Kia, Hyundai or Honda. Even Dacia get far better JD Power (or whatever called these days) survey results than any of the "prestige" marques.

Nick

[mk2cossie]

As appears to be the case here, I'd vote for the 1.2 tfsi lump over a VWAG diesel any day

We have a few customers at work with various diesel powered VW group cars and they are a ball ache due to the pottering around.
And as said above, the diesel engines take an age to warm up compared to the petrols

[stealthstylz]

Neither they're both absolute dog turd engines.

[backtothe80s]

My input from experience of the 1.6 vag TDI. Newish cars with low mileage.

Turbo issues
Egr and injector failure
Dmf issues and failure
Dpf issues on short journeys but that's par for the course
Poor mpg at motorway speeds and local driving (for a TDI)
Uninspiring performance and driveability
Slow

After the PD things went worse, not that it was without its issues but it was a fairly reliable lump

After owning many vag moderns I would never go there again. Quality is not there, price and repair bills still are and exceed some other marques

Petrol all the way

[ChasR]

The TFSI (and a number of early DI injected engines) aren't as reliable as you think. I'm talking injectors, high pressure fuel pumps and so on.

For that reason it's a hard call for either as stealthstylz said. There is no clean cut case.

DMFs will now affect most cars out there and careful driven can circumvent that. To put it into perspective we have two Mondeo 2.5Ts, 1 is a motorway car with 173k on the clock, the other has 165k on the clock.
-The 165k had a shot flywheel since 155k IMHO, but we lived with it for a very long time. We changed it as the slave cylinder fragged itself 2k ago.
-The 173k we've owned for longer is still on its factory flywheel and clutch, and we've owned it since 112k. FWIW the clutch on that car has always been on the high side.

Diesels IMHO tend to be OK if you run them on a diet of V-Power and service them on the dot, preferably every 10k, and no the wanklife, sorry, longlife services the manufacturers specify to win over company car owners.

Going to a Single Mass flywheel is also a mixed blessing from reading further.

If you want reliability go for a 'normal' petrol engine. They are much rarer these days but they are out there. The Fiesta for example still used to the 1.2 Sigma up until quite late.

[Phil H]

Sept 18, 2018 18:07:00 GMT ChasR said:

If you want reliability go for a 'normal' petrol engine. They are much rarer these days but they are out there. The Fiesta for example still used to the 1.2 Sigma up until quite late.

A work colleague recently had a Mazda 3 - dirt cheap, 2.0 Petrol engine (115bhp rings a bell) yet got about 45mpg from it without trying. Coincidentally he now drives an A3 1.6TDI which doesn’t do as much to the gallon and apart from the apparent “kudos” of those 4 rings, he wish he still had the Mazda..

[Phil H]

If it was my own money, I wouldn’t touch pretty much any cars between 5 and 15 years old. Wife’s car is a rotation of PCP specials which are always in warranty, and my non-company cars are always pre-2000 (cheap enough to be disposable and old enough to be fixable). Too much financial risk for me for those that are within the 3-15 year old bracket. Another colleague has a recent-ish A3 where the MMI(?) module has gone so no sound, satnav or anything. He has one option - Audi and they’re quoting £2k+ for it.

If I had 8k to spend, I’d be buying something about 12-24 months old with the rest of a 5/7 year warranty from the manufacturer.

[joem83]

Can get a 15 plate civic or 65 plate jazz petrol in budget.

[ChasR]

Sept 18, 2018 20:52:10 GMT Phil H said:

If it was my own money, I wouldn’t touch pretty much any cars between 5 and 15 years old. Wife’s car is a rotation of PCP specials which are always in warranty, and my non-company cars are always pre-2000 (cheap enough to be disposable and old enough to be fixable). Too much financial risk for me for those that are within the 3-15 year old bracket. Another colleague has a recent-ish A3 where the MMI(?) module has gone so no sound, satnav or anything. He has one option - Audi and they’re quoting £2k+ for it.

If I had 8k to spend, I’d be buying something about 12-24 months old with the rest of a 5/7 year warranty from the manufacturer.

This.

I've seen a manufactuer's warranty on a few occasions be good. However, IME, only Mercedes, VAG or BMW offer such warranties. Going for an older car makes it worthwhile you just putting something away every month as the costs become crazy.

As an example, my M3 on a Mondial warranty is about £3-4k! I did just say that! Take a 7 year old E90 M3 and it's £700.

[retromadness123]

This is why I buy older cars the newest car I ever driven as a daily was a 306 on a Y reg and that was rubbish, so I now just stick to the 80's and early 90's, and most of the work can be done yourself no fancy gadgets and they tend to be reliable, I think all i need is a nice old Mercedes and that will go on for ever, a few of my mates have bought new Mercedes and they are useless and always moaning about how bad the build quality is from what used to be a very reliable manufacturer, but I think these days people just want something new, its like at work my boss is always like lets buy a new car so we don't have to spend money on it, and I often say that an older car is more robust and reliable than the plastic stuff that's made these days .... Rant over lol just by a W124

[jamesd1972]

Have a good rootle about in Honest John:

www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/audi/a3-sportback-2013/

Then have a gander at

www.whatcar.com/news/2018-what-car-reliability-survey/n17811

Audi overpriced for what they are I'd get them to try a yeti if they want space !

James

[ChasR]

Sept 20, 2018 18:49:53 GMT retromadness123 said:

This is why I buy older cars the newest car I ever driven as a daily was a 306 on a Y reg and that was rubbish, so I now just stick to the 80's and early 90's, and most of the work can be done yourself no fancy gadgets and they tend to be reliable, I think all i need is a nice old Mercedes and that will go on for ever, a few of my mates have bought new Mercedes and they are useless and always moaning about how bad the build quality is from what used to be a very reliable manufacturer, but I think these days people just want something new, its like at work my boss is always like lets buy a new car so we don't have to spend money on it, and I often say that an older car is more robust and reliable than the plastic stuff that's made these days .... Rant over lol just by a W124

On the flipside, I've had two 306s and both did some serious mileage. They were superb things.

The W124 is far from issue free as well. Go with an early car and the CIS Metering heads are now becoming a problem; small wonder there are memes of M103 engines and people hanging themselves now. Then you have rust issue which affects all of them. The diesels are good, but they can have the vacuum pump grenade itself, albeit with warning, which can write off the engine. The later HFM cars (like mine) have issues with the wiring harness, unless they've been replaced. A friend bought one with a 'repaired' loom, and it seemed almost incurable until the new owner put a fresh harness in place. All also have lower arm balljoints which if worn are very likely to pop out, due to the springs always having pressure on the lower arms.