I owned 2 VWs in my life, my first, a 1999 Golf was an amazing car. It felt solid and was super reliable right up until I T-boned someone who made an illegal turn and it got written off. I drove an Acura Integra for years after that and had just tonnes of quality issues where it was needing constant maintenance. As soon as I was able to, I bought another VW, a 2003 GTI which I drove with only 1 major repair (AC Compressor) in the 200,000kms I put to it (sold it to a friend at 330,000kms, it still hasn't needed repairs).
I went to a Mazda most recently, but I can't say anything about its reliability since I just bought it in December and only have 5,000kms on it so far.
But my experience, and those among my friends (I was part of a local VW enthusiast club) is that the cars are fine. But the kicker is you need to stay on top of your maintenance. If you skimp on the regular work, you end up paying for it in the end. I had to do various work on the car merely due to its age, but ultimately I loved the VW GTI. It was solid and reliable for me.
This is the absolute truth about most modern cars. The main thing I look for now in a used car is parts availability and how well the car has been maintained.
This is odd coming from a person who is making a sweeping judgment based on owning one car. My family and I have owned mk4, mk5, and mk6 VWs. Never had to bring any of them in for anything other than standard maintenance. I have a newish BMW now and my folks have a lightly used Mercedes. So far everyone's happy there too.
VWs also have a pretty corporate, standard chassis of parts that's reused across almost all of VW's and much of Audi's cars. There should always be cheap parts available from third parties given the number of models interchanging the same parts under the hood. BMWs (and probably Mercedes too) definitely are more expensive to repair and maintain. IMO they tend to over-engineer, and that comes with both good and bad consequences.
there's an inherent tradeoff between performance, reliability, comfort, and price. once people find their preferred set of tradeoffs, they inevitably start making comments on the internet about how they don't understand why everyone doesn't buy their favorite brand.
The gte when I tested seemed heavy and the brakes were spongy compared to the gti (regenerative brakes but the corollas aren't spongy like that) and it was evident when the electric motor switched off.
Another problem is people don't know any better. It's not like the average person has owned cars from all the major brands for enough time for things to go wrong with them. Most people own only a few cars over their entire life. I think this is particularly true with brands like VW. People just don't know any better and think it's normal for a car to be a money pit.
Cars are a strange thing. Very quickly after getting a car it becomes an essential part of life. When the bill comes through to repair whatever has gone wrong, there's no choice but to pay it. You can't just choose to not pay because it's too expensive. People take their car to the garage where it's essentially held captive until they pay the ransom.
I own a VW myself but I'll never own one (or any other German car) ever again. I will be going back to Japanese cars next time. Honda or Toyota.