The Solstice is nice - kind of a Corvette junior. The 'vert top is not as good in Virginia as it would be in Arizona. Back in the day when we had a Del Sol, I don't remember more than a dozen days when I really wanted to be out with the top off. That Lotus is very nice, but a little extreme. I might actually look around for a second hand GTO. The railroad fleet vehicle look could come in handy.
Right now, VW repaired my EIGHT YEAR OLD TDI under warranty. It will probably pay me to keep it until the warranty expires.
10 years/100,000 miles on the powertrain. The engine is known for out-lasting the car and 250,000 rebuild cycles are common, so they weren't taking too much of a chance. I didn't even consider this a factor when I bought it.
Long version of the problem I had and its resolution:
It was traced to a VW service part failure. At 60,000 miles I had the timing belt, tensioner, and water pump replaced. Only the belt itself was scheduled, but the cost difference to replace the tensioner and water pump is so low, I had them done as well. The new version of the belt and tensioner has an 80,000 mile service life. The water pump has no scheduled maintenance and is usually considered a break-fix component.
The first time the car stopped running, they diagnosed a failed injection pump (an $1800 part!). The injector pump is driven by the timing belt. While installing the pump, the replacement tensioner was found to be defective and replaced. No charge for fixing these, but I was concerned. They couldn't tell me why the tensioner failed. They also told me the injector pumps never fail while the engine is running. They always fail at the start/stop boundry, just like code :).
The car stopped again after driving just about 120 miles. This time, the new tensioner failed and damaged the timing belt. The theory is that there were bad tensioners in the stockroom. The injector pump failure may have been caused by improper tension on the belt, or it may have been just a premature part failure. We'll see. The thing runs great now.
Note also that the G8 (the subject of your post) has a 5 year 100,000 mile powertrain warranty. They also plan to release the G8 Stort Truck soon. GM hasn't had a ute to sell since the old El Camino.
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