caravelle advice and info

[wandaria]

Folks due to an additional neice and nephew living with me permanently now, that added onto my own 5 children gives us 7 children and 9 of us all up. I currently have a 2008 model t5 comfortline with 7 seats, so you see my quandry.

bascially I can get my t5 upgraded to 9 seat at a cost of about 5 grand give or take.

My other option is to buy a 9 seat caravelle. So any feedback on the caravelles as to the new models etc. Usual story want to do it as cheaply as reasonably possible. I currenly salary sacrifice and so would any new car.

Anyway I look on red book and it says my car is worth between 25 and 33 grand basis wholesale/retail. My payout today would be about 31 grand on the vehicle, so certainly assuming red book are correct I am in the general ball park of covering costs.

I have to consider the 5 grand spend for extra seats on the current t5 in that equation as well, so looking at basic equations I can afford to sell the car for a little less allowing for the 5 grand that I would be saving by not paying out for upgrade seats on my current t5.

Anyway when all is said and done my t5 has been a wonderful car, not major issues etc. so looking for peoples experience wiht the caravelle (preferable 9 seat experience) as to what they think of the car etc, any problems with the new models and blah blah blah.

Thanks

Tim

[question?]

We took delivery of an MY11 9 Seat Caravelle just under 10 months ago, after owning a Mazda MPV for 4 years. We out grew it as we are family of 8. Though I also toyed with the idea of adding in seats to the MPV as US version is 8 seats.

In the end we choose VW over what else available based on brand experience and quality (really it was down between a Mercedes 8 seat only or VW, we looked at Imax but didn't even drive it). Our Caravelle is fantastic vehicle to drive and my wife handles it with easy despite its size. It totally dwarfed our MPV 7 seater. Its performance is great as it the comfort for all our tribe.. not mention all the extra room. And it looks great... we have Natural Grey Metallic.

But here comes the downside...

The issues we have had.. have really dented our confidence. I know things to go wrong and that's why their is a warranty window (as dealer said) but after have an another brand for number of years and only have 2 things happening only towards the end of its run... and then you get a new van and things start happening early.

We had this noise/rattle that surfaced around 6 months ago in the front driver side suspension.
So far we have replaced the strut, the sway bar joints, the ball joints and some other thing around the right hand wheel. We have had the in and out of dealer around 6 times.

Did that fix it? ... well I thought it had then around 3 days after had another lot of parts replaced it re-appeared.

Finally last week the van was in for 2 days... so they could try and find.. apparently they used some kind of listening device to isolate where the noise is coming from.. they have confirmed its the engine mount blocks. Why a noise that only appears when you turn to the right comes from the Engine mounts I have really no idea. I am not a mechanic and far removed from anything on that side. So we have to order those from Germany and they will take a few weeks to come in.

And while they were checking that they said there is also a small seal oil leak between the engine and gearbox. Great the fun keeps coming. We have now just clocked over 15k... and its ready for its first service. We are going sit tight, wait for all the parts and then it will disappear for at least 2 days to be correct again. The dealer has been great and are looking after us with another car during each visit..but.

So you can see now... we have lost confidence in it just a little. We spent close to 60k when adding in the extras we wanted (sensors/color bumpers/alloys/tints etc). It was suppose to be a long term investment for us, that is we were going to hold onto it for 5-6 years with extended warranty etc.. but now I am thinking do we keep or do we jump?

There really isn't another brand we would jump to in terms of size... there is no way I would go to a Toyota Mini bus.

I really do love the VW brand... and have been wanting to get one for ages and wil more than likley get another for our second car. You could say the issues we have had possibly minor in the scheme of things... but its been very inconvenient when you have a larger family like we do.

Wow that's turned into an essays ... thing might use some of this in my letter to VAG.

[Ivo]

From memory, there was a dark grey 07-08 model with about 50k on in it that had the 9 seat conversion. It was about $37000 on carsales.com.au.

It may be worth looking for one that's had the extra seats added.