Sans Subie

[Aerotech]

After 10 years, I find myself without a Subaru in the stable. I've gone all-VW for now... here's the new ride; 2004 Passat Variant 1.8T 4-Motion 5MT
A bit of a unicorn in the VW world, very few of these were imported with a manual transmission. This is one of 6 documented cars in this color combo (Shadow Blue / Graphite Leather) in N. America. They are notorious attention hogs, lots of maintenance & repair issues, hopefully I got a decently cared-for example. It seems in very good shape, just did the full-monty timing belt/water pump/thermostat/oil seal treatment, and the internals were extremely clean. Essentially it's an Audi A6 Quattro that gets 35mpg hwy. I was really close to getting an Audi Allroad, but the thirst of the 2.7T is pretty epic.

[evolutionmovement]

I would check into if there was a fix for the poor oil pick up design on that engine. I don't know if there was one, but there should have been. Aftermarket, perhaps. I don't know exactly how bad a job that is to do, but I know of 5 of those engines that lunched before 50k because of it, so just something to consider.

That leather looks nice—not stiff or vinyl looking like most cars seem to have. Nice color, too.

[Aerotech]

The dreaded "Oil Sludge" problem... The owners (and sometimes the dealerships) failed to use the prescribed synthetic oil, and the turbo would coke up, dropping cooked oil turds into the oil pan. These congregated around the intake screen, and choked off oil flow. If the driver ignored the flashing red "oil- stop the car" light, *poof* smoke one engine.

Normally it wouldn't be much of a problem, but you actually have to suspend the engine and drop the front crossmember to get the oil pan off the engine.

This one has documented oil changes, always synthetic, and I also saw the internals in the head; very clean, not even any varnishing.
I read a lot of horror stories, but I also read of 200K+ mileage with very few problems... depends on the previous owners maintenance habits, mostly.