Interesting. So, to counter that, I've driven VW for many years in many different models on ridiculous mileage and never had a single issue with them.
This was until about 2008 when I switched to Mercedes, those too were pretty reliable until the last one, which was a recent vintage C class. Now I drive an oldie (25 this january).
German cars have a weird reputation as being unreliable in the US. Which seems strange as a European where they generally have a pretty good reputation, maybe not as good as the Japanese brands but not a million miles away.
I think the difference is likely just that the average backstreet garage knows all the faults on a 2005 VW Jetta and how to fix them, they have the right diagnostic equipment to plug them in and read the fault codes etc.
In the US I suspect they'd be the same with most GM / Ford / Honda cars of the same era but would think twice about touching a VW or Mercedes.
Sure, but if you take it to the garage and they know what the issue is straight away and have it fixed 2 hours later it is not nearly as big of a problem if it takes 2 days to figure out the issue and 2 weeks to order in the parts right?
The first is a minor inconvenience, the second is likely to leave a lasting impression of "this car is unreliable".
Precisely, so the less trips you need to take, the more reliable the vehicle is. It's a single axis. It goes from "inoperable and on fire" on the left to "exists only in far flung sci-fi fantasies" and the more trips to the mechanic you take, the further to the left of that axis your car is.
This is why vehicles that need oil changes every 15,000 mile (~24,000 km) are more reliable than ones from a few generations ago that were essentially constantly being serviced.
This was until about 2008 when I switched to Mercedes, those too were pretty reliable until the last one, which was a recent vintage C class. Now I drive an oldie (25 this january).