which multivan, auto or 4 motion etc

[wandaria]

Hi folks I am looking to buy a multivan comfortline prabably sometime around November December and will salary sacrifice it. I am looking for those experienced in the vw van lineup about what they reckon is a must have option etc and why if possible.

Also I live in the country and travel a few dirt roads sometimes, so I am considering buying the 4 motion. Would prefer the ease of auto by simply putting in gear but where I live I would not have to do an awful lot of gear changing too often, but I believe the safety aspects of the 4 motion would be
better. Reason I need the multivan is that I will shortly have 5 kids under 9 and the new tarago is a pice of crap.

There are no multivan dealers around me ( I live in country Queensland) so I have to travel quite a few hundred k's to do test drives which I have done a couple

Any ins and outs I should be aware of etc.

I appreciate any feedback

thanks

Tim

[phaeton]

Welcome to VWwA Tim

shogun (Rod) should be able to give advice on 4Motion Multivan, he has a TDI Highline with 4Motion

[Seano]

Wandaria.........the 4motion on dirt is the way to go. So so stable.

Coupled with the flexibility of the 6 speed it's what I'd go with....

[shogun2]

Hard to say what the difference would be as I haven't done any direct comparison between FWD and 4Motion on dirt. All I can really say is the 4Motion works well, and I would not be without it. (and we enjoy the manual driving)

[wandaria]

thanks so far guys, yeah I favour the idea of the 4 motion myself, although on normal roads the fwd seems allright to me, however I drive dirt roads a bit so it seems like 4 motion.

Anyone got any problems with their multivan or idiosyncresis that I should be aware of. It is hard buying a car when all the options are't really availble options in Australia and most of the dealers can't or won't tell you that.

[BobD]

A few problems with my Multivan Comfortline September 2006 build.

In the first week the drink holder on the front of the table fell apart after jamming so it wouldn't spring out when pushed in to release it.

Also the passenger door courtesy light switch disappeared in first week.

Both problems fixed under warranty but took some time to get parts.

Rain sensing wipers now don't work. They are now just normal intermittent wipers and run at the same speed regardless of the rain intensity or complete lack of rain. They used to work properly when we got the car in June 2007 but I haven't tried to get them fixed yet.

Today I couldn't move the rear seat forwards or backwards. It is very hard to clip the back rest down flat when folded forward and once I bounce on it to lock it down the lever to move the seat forwrds and backwards still doesn't work. This happened a few weeks ago for my wife but when I had another go later it worked. Now I can't get it to release either.

Anyone else had this seat problem?

I will get these fixed also when I get a chance.

One thing I didn't know when I bought the car is that in the newer builds, such as mine, the three trays under the rear seat are no longer supplied. In fact the tracks for them to run in have been deleted except for the middle space under the rear seat.

[Seano]

My only concern with the T5 (apart from the cost - which explains why I still have a T4!!) was the alloy fluid cooler found under the vehicle on the passenger side behind the front wheel. I think it might be unique to the TDI models but I'm guessing here. It's about the size of an A4 piece of paper and looks vulnerable to flying rocks and the like.....

[BobD]

My only concern with the T5 (apart from the cost - which explains why I still have a T4!!) was the alloy fluid cooler found under the vehicle on the passenger side behind the front wheel. I think it might be unique to the TDI models but I'm guessing here. It's about the size of an A4 piece of paper and looks vulnerable to flying rocks and the like.....

I didn't discover this until a month or two after I bought it. I do some gravel driving so I hope it doesn't get destroyed. Looks to be in a very vulnerable position for Australian driving.

Anyone know of anything to protect it?

[coastie]

I've had my T5 Comfortline Multivan since June 06. I have had some idiosyncrasies with the automatic where if you go through a dip in the road at 90-110 kmh the vehicle decides that the change in inertia or direction requires the auto to change down to 3rd and then have a bit of difficulty in selecting the right gear for the speed and revs. I have had it back to the dealers for a couple of times and they acknowledge it happens and remap something and then after about 2 months it happens again. I now put it into the tiptronic and try to educate the computer.

If I had the choice again I think i would go the extra $1k and get the four motion but the auto for all my little issues is great and cruise control is brilliant. I did Sunshine Coast to Mt Hotham last year in the first month of ownership and it performed excellently in the cold on icy roads for a fwd.

I have a white one but I'd like and off road grey of the champagne colour for the dirt reasons. The oil cooler hasn't sustained any damage yet but it hasn't had much dirt use in its 30000 kms.

Good luck with the purchase which dealer are you thinking of going to?

[wandaria]

Thanks folks, I will be salary sacrificing as that is the only way I can afford it, I have up untill mid december to technically decide which car I get, as that is when my old lease runs out, naturally enough depending upon what I want in my new car will decide how long before that I have to order it. The good thing is that I have since found out from Austral VW in Brisbane that I can have aftermarket seats (basically for children) fitted in the multivans, by a couple of different places.

Mind you I do believe that the new caravelle 8 seater will arrive in Australia sometime in Ocotber November this year, so that is the other option, however ultimatley it will come down to the deal I get. As standard fleet discounting you get 10% off the multivan (at least that is what I have been advised).

It amazes me that prices you see on the web and dealerships for the demo models which some of the dealerships have, some of them have 2006 demos that they still want almost full pricing for. They must be planning to keep them forever as demos.

The only other real car option for me was the tarago, but now that they have bought out the new model it has a great engine but the seats etc are crap. The tarago is now a no hoper for large families.

Sounds to me like I will be going with the 4 motion. What amazes me is how people think. I know some people who saved some money on the cars they bought because they are cheaper to buy hence the repayments are less, but I know in real world driving that I will save between 1500 and 2 grand a year by driving the diesel as against my current unleaded petrol beast. That money basically makes up the difference in repayments and yet they would have a far more suitable car with the VW, well at least is my thinking.

My current car which is a ford territory (love driving it, but not comfortable enough for a big family) chews between 14 and 15 litres per 100ks and I reckon the multivan wil do about 10-11 give or take, anyone disagree with that sort of mileage. Most of my driving is done on 100 k an hour roads.

[shogun2]

Around town I get 10.5 l/100km in the manual 4Motion. This appears to drop dramatically on long trips - somewhere around 8-9l/100Kms. (Adelaide/Alice Springs/Adelaide about six weeks ago).
The only ideosyncrasies I currently have is the dash has started squeeking, and the sat nav software is not up to date. (Eurovox went bust, and there is no update for my van. There are also roads and one complete suburb not even documented!) Hopefully this will be fixed within a month, as I have been told that VWG have a replacement under test.
Everything else is working OK, and I still love driving it!

[BobD]

Wanderia,

Not sure why you would want to replace the fantastic VW seats in a Multvan with after market seats.

I was looking at Territories before I decided on my Multivan. However, I couldn't buy it without a diesel after being so impressed with the T4 TDI I had since 2004. I paid out my Novated Lease early to get the Multivan when the right deal came up.

When I got mine in June, I started looking at the 9 seater Kombi. However, with the discount I got on the Multivan that wasn't available for the Kombi at the time, they were almost the same price. I decided that I would forgoe 2 seats for the refinement, comfort, quietness and extra power of the 128kW Multivan Comfortline.

I am not sorry I did, although the extra seats would be handy, especially with 6 children. The good thing is that 4 of the "children" now have their own cars so there is usually an alternative available and seven seats are usually enough.

I drove the Multivan to work on Friday, a 20km each way drive through heavy traffic to the Perth CBD but with some 100kph sections as well. It averaged 9.5l/100km according to the trip computer. Since then with my wife driving today, it has jumped up to its usual 10.5l/100km. Maybe she is the lead foot that causes my car to use more fuel than I would like!!

[wandaria]

Iwon't replace the seats but you can have after marekt seats fully Australian compliant fitted between the the middle row 2 single seats and or between the driver and passenger seats, naturally enough, they will oly be childrens seats, don't worry I won't get rid of the good vw seats.

Bob if your thinking about you can get extra seats put in.

I too am thinking about paying out the multivan early on the lease

Its amazing at time how the women seem to drive with less fuel economy.

Bob if you don't mind me asking, what sort of deal did you get on the multivan, I will be buying the comfortline and probably the 4 motion, not sure what extras I will get but I want a towball and stuff which I am not prepared to pay vw their exhoribant price so it will be a salary sacrifice after market fitting.

Interestd to know because in the last couple of months the recomended retails dropped 3 grand on the multivans and like always good to know their bottom type price when you go wading into the market. I remember looking at a suburaabout 5 years ago and anyway to cut a long story short their was one particualr subaru dealer that had a tendency to cut the other subaru dealers short so one nearby subaru dealer (amongst numerous others) who did not like the other dealer advised me of the absolute break even cost on the car after all kickbacks etc and it was about 3 grand less than the best price I could get through fleet leasing, Anyway the wife changed her mind the last minute and we did not get the subaru, but I do believe that I would have got the car cheap becasue he wanted rid of them.

I am happy for everyone to make their profit, but not when they lie to you about it. But anyway thats another matter.

I tried all sorts of ways not to be able to justify the extra price of the VW, but in the end I have justified the price because I reckon its worth it.

[shogun2]

Hi Wandaria,
I too have a situation that when I get back from a business trip I find that the average fuel consumption on the diesels has jumped about 20% from where it is when I drive. I figured it out the other day - the other half regularly drives our Honda Civic. The Civic requires much higher revs to get anywhere compared to the diesels, so she drives the diesels with the same revs as the Civic. Nothing I say can get her to change ...

[BobD]

Hi Wandaria,
I too have a situation that when I get back from a business trip I find that the average fuel consumption on the diesels has jumped about 20% from where it is when I drive. I figured it out the other day - the other half regularly drives our Honda Civic. The Civic requires much higher revs to get anywhere compared to the diesels, so she drives the diesels with the same revs as the Civic. Nothing I say can get her to change ...

You are right. You need to keep the gears as high as possible on diesels to get best economy. One of the reasons I was happy to get an auto was to help my wife who was not that good at changing gears with the 5 speed manual on the T4. However, she now has great trouble operating the climate control A/C and it is always wrong when I get in the car to drive it!!

I tell her to leave it on Auto and not touch it but she insists on trying to switch the fan off because it is too noisy or something else that she thinks she can fix. The only time you can even hear the fan at all is when it switches to high for a couple of minutes when the car is either very cold or very hot. Anyway, she is happy doing whatever it is she does while she is driving.