Volkswagen India — VW Touareg Engine Fault!

Address:

Gurgaon, Haryana

I bought VW Touareg (luxury SUV) in March 2010 in Gurgaon. I drive around 10-15Kms/day to office and back and have driven only around 28K Kms in less than 4 years. Recently, the engine had started to make background humming noise and some missing, therefore, I took the card to Frontier Auto Service Center, Gurgaon (authorised service center). They checked and said that this is nothing serious and some winter morning problems. I got the car back and next morning when drove for about 100 meters from my home, the warning lights started flashing with the Warning message "Engine Fault". I got the car back home and next morning when decided to take it to the service center, the car would not move and started emitting thick black smoke. I had to get it towed to the service center. The technician said that it would cost Rs.3500 to check which I had no option but to agree to. He said it will take several hours and called me back in the evening that the engine is overheating and there are several parts that need replacement. The total repair cost quoted was in excess of Rs.1lakh. I was aghast - how could a Premium SUV that had hardly driven 6-7K Kms/year have engine overheating?? They told me that the Valve, Cooler, Flap and some 20 other parts needed replacement. Given that the parts would take 5-7 days, I had to leave the car. I called their Customer Care Center and they gave me a complaint number CAL41345 on Jan 18, 2014. No one called me back for few days; then I called the people mentioned in the complaint - turns out they had referred me back to the same Gurgaon service center who told me that I had no other recourse but to pay for the repairs. They even told me that this is nothing new - several other Touaregs and other VW cars had similar or worse problems!! Given that I had no other options, I have decided to flood the social media with my grievance hoping some VW Corporate official will respond to my grievance. The questions are - 1) How can an engine overheat at such low usage? How can a Valve and Cooler burn out? that too for a Premium Luxury SUV costing Rs.55lakhs? 3)Why should I pay for these repairs when these are manufacturing defects? I hope people reading this are sufficiently warned and don't buy any VW cars. I am infact buying 2 more cars and guess what, they are not VW? Waiting to hear back from VW!