Hm, looks like I'll be moving to U.S.A. for a while @ some point

Well that's a lot better than a few fat cats getting fat at the expense of everybody else, like some places. That shows a lot of respect and responsibility when that productive segment of the society holds a whole relatively big country, with not many people, together.

Speaking of the Jetta; I doubt if the Jetta's over there are made in Mexico. Probably Germany. But it sounds like a lot of them are junk too. I was really surprised when that car turned out to be so many problems. My lawyer told me that there were many of them that were lemons and it was because they were made in Mexico and the quality control was not happening. I would say it was mismanagement by VW because it is obvious that Mexicans can make good guitars with decent quality control. Plus, supposedly, a lot of the California Fender employees were Mexicans, historically.

It was interesting because that Jetta was in the family since new, and it had almost zero problems until it hit 140.000 miles, at which point it suddenly seemed to spend time at garage every other week. I changed pretty much every wearing part from shocks to clutch and brakes, but still it might just die on me due to fuel lines having been dried so the rubber just broke up, and we got rid of it. Had no A/C either, that was a good reason to dump it too.

I guess the car had a planned lasting time of about 140k-ml.

Many people refuse to acknowledge it, but all cars have their planned duration times...for instance, in Japan I understand it's really difficult and expensive to have older cars, because the law mandates some major repairs (I dunno, change airbags at 5 years???) or something like that, and it's quite cheap to buy new cars, so as a result there are hardly any cars there older than 5 years. Maybe Syo can confirm is this is right. Thus most cars sold in Japan are planned so that they last for 5 years and how much is expected in mileage during that time. It's amazing to Japanese car people to learn that the average car here is around 11 years old. Hell, I have never bought a car younger than 6 years myself :-)

In the 70's. Toyotas had a 50,000 mile warranty. Their engines would fail quite often at around 52,000-55,000 miles!

Some newer autos have longer life materials, like ceramic cylinder linings (thank you, NASA) and 100,000 mile spark plugs.

I recommend to anyone looking to buy a vehicle to check the manufacturer's reliability ratings at JD Powers
http://www.jdpower.com/autos/ratings...ings-by-brand/
and to stay away from any manufacturer that does not have a 3 score minimum (out of 5) for each category.
(sorry, but that means to avoid Jeep, Chrysler, Mitsubishi, Dodge, Mini, Land Rover, VW, etc.)

The problem with these studies is that usually they give so contradictory results it's nigh impossible to trust them well. Although they do give good general idea. It's no surprise that on the whole, expensive cars fare better than cheap ones. We just had a similar study here and some of the top marks are the same (lexus, porsche) but then again for instance Mercedes has done pretty poorly here and BMW and Mini (which is built by BMW) on the other hand are right at the top here.

One thing that may have an impact on many such studies is how people report about the problems. Some owners of, say, Mercedes, claim there's been nothing wrong 'ever' with the car but then when you really dig into it, it may not be true at all, they have just more or less 'actively forgotten' about the issue, so strong is their belief that the car is so good, or they haven't paid attention what's been fixed at service time.

And yea...that has a HUGE impact; how often and how is the car serviced. For instance Huyndai and Kia have done very well in dependability studies, but when I talked with a guy who works as a repairman for them, he laughed and said of course they do, because they have them serviced twice as often as other cars, and they've been told to check everything and swap for new parts if anything even feels like it's going soon.

The result is they fare very well, but the owner also gets way bigger service bills than with some other brand.

Moreover, I've noticed that if someone has a really 'premium' level car, they also tend to take much better care of them, including servicing them at the least issue emerging. I and my neighbor are good examples; I buy a car and I don't give a rat's *** about some little things or whether I knock it against a wall a little or whatever...and in 5 years I have NEVER had the thing serviced. I just add or change oil, and if something goes so badly broken I'll repair it then, and only if it's a real must-do and the car won't run unless I do, or is hazardous.

But my neighbor always has his car serviced at _least_ twice a year, even if there's no real need, and even fixes things 'beforehand' like if he's told some part typically goes wrong after 200.000 he'll have it changed at 150.000 'just to be sure'. So no wonder he'd answer in any study that his car has had zero problems, whereas I would have to report quite a few little issues.

But if we compare money spent...he spends like $1000-2000 per year just for servicing the car and I pay...well a LOT less.

I don't really think that there are basically any huge differences between the brands when it comes to quality other than what is obvious by the used materials and what you can obviously see both in the actual car and the price tag. I usually look for things like rust protection in the given model year, that's pretty much the only thing that concerns me. I don't care if there are some minor problems or not, but I care if the car rusts. For instance BMW, Audi, Volvo, Citroen and Peugeot do not rust, most others do, and for instance Mercedes is really badly prone to rusting at least in models 2-5 years old, Ford and Mazda are terrible in rusting as well, etc. etc...

A friend of a friend, excellent motorcycle mechanic (wrenched for a racing team once) took a job with an Audi dealer, and had tremendous stories!
I am told newer high-end cars have a boatload of micro-motors for this that , etc and Audi seem to have a high degree of complexity in the design of things. The Audi shop manuals are many and big. Often, a problem is only fixed with several shop visits. One of his stories was a very minor problem with some gadget, which required removing the whole dashboard which took some three-four hours.. and the repair bill reflected that. On the other hand a fellow for same bike group had an older Audi and was planning on driving it to the ground, towing race bikes and stuff like that with it.

Yes, Audi is VAG's 1st or 'premium' brand (if you don't count the specials like Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti, which are also made by VAG...Porsche as well although that one has a special relationship to VAG). Every new idea and engine and whatnot is first implemented in Audis, and only a year or two later in VW's at best - the secondary brand. Of course that has the benefit for VW that often the designs are by that time more tried and tested, while Audis, despite more expensive etc. have had some serious issues of late.

The third brand in VAG group, Skoda, is another story...they get to use VAG engines and such only several years after they've been introduced in Audis. However they have their own designers and can build the cars outside the usual VAG restrictions, and thus the Skodas have a rep of being the most reliable ones, despite cheapest, and have gained a very very good reputation of late plus a nice value retention too.

VAG also includes another side brand, Seat, which is yet another story...a few years back they re-released the Audi A4 from 3 years before rebranded as Seat and with cosmetic changes (called Exeo), and at the same time Audi released its new A4. The fun thing is that a few magazines tested the cars side by side with a tight race and the older design actually won the comparison in one :-)

It's nigh impossible to try and keep up with car quality and where and how each is made these days. At least if you buy a car here, it's not what you might expect.
Certain Nissan is made in England. Some BMW's are made in USA. Some Porsche are made in Finland. Many VW's are made in Czech. Toyotas in Romania. Some Mercedes in Spain. Volvos in Holland.

Hard to keep up with the stuff...with many brands only a handful of models are any more made in the original country.