Pre 2012 Ibiza 1.4 TSI FR/Cupra/Bocanegra - Should I buy?

D'Marco

Active Member
Jun 19, 2018
4
0
Hey, potential future member here! I've almost lost all my patience with my current car so I'm thinking of buying another one.

The Ibiza has really tickled my fancy but a quick google throws up horror stories of stretched timing chains, misfires and excessive oil consumption.

The oil issue I can live with. I only do around 6000 miles a year so I don't mind topping up every couple of months.

I read somewhere that if the car has managed to hit 50000 miles without having these issues it should be fine but I'm a bit sceptical of this.

Would I be safe to buy a car that has FSH?
Are the 40000, 80000 etc DSG services documented in the service history?
Should I avoid high mileage examples?
Are warranties likely to cover these issues and do they cover the DSG gearboxes?

Sorry to bombard you all with questions but the buying guides I found online don't go into any details and I need to have confidence in the next car I purchase.

Thanks in advance.
 

RUM4MO

Active Member
Jun 4, 2008
7,784
983
South Scotland
Hello, I have never ever owned one, but it is extremely fair to say, in fun terms they do seem to offer a lot - but as an engine design the 1.4TSI Twincharger has been a complete mess up with little or no evidence of life testing being carried out both on the first version or the later one. If you value your money and time I seems that you could be very badly let down with no one willing to help you out if/when the engine failed.
Don’t think that using oil is just a small “contained” issue, it will lead to worse things as time goes on it seems.
I am just very thankful that I discovered this before buying my wife a VW Group car with any of these potentially amazing engines in them, too many hearts and wallets have been broken, though you might be lucky!
 

D'Marco

Active Member
Jun 19, 2018
4
0
Thanks for the reply mate. It's such a shame. It ticks all my boxes and given it's VAG you'd expect it to be bulletproof. I'm swinging more towards a no than a yes to buying one for sure but I've still got a devil on my shoulder going "Buyonebuyonebuyone" :D

I'd feel more confident in buying one if I knew I could get a warranty that would cover these known issues. I may need to do a bit more research into warranties before I make my final decision.

I wish Toyota hadn't stopped building fun cars in 2006! Their cars are still pretty solid afaik, just dull as dishwater! (GT86 aside)
 
Last edited:

RUM4MO

Active Member
Jun 4, 2008
7,784
983
South Scotland
GT86, is that the Subaru ?

Another fact about these twincharger engines is, it appears that no engine reconditioner is currently supporting that engine, so no ready stock of a new one other than from VW Group who I believe always have a few in stock in UK for their customers, the base engine goes for £3500 or so. No VW Group dealer would take on rebuilding a wrecked engine or that type, it would cost too much, always cheaper to buy a new base engine it seems. Now if you needed an engine and bought one from a write-off, would you ever be able to find out that engine's history in respect of in warranty rectification/upgrade which there were a few different ones. I'd think, if you did buy one that was still working okay, and you immediately took it off the road and found an engine builder that knew these engines, and they upgraded it to beyond what VW Group were ever interested to doing, you might end up with a very desirable and reliable car - but at what price I can't say.

When my wife's old 2002 9N Polo 1.4 16V 75PS was running out of life, she fancied getting an Audi A1, I am glad that I did not go down that road as the engine I would have picked for buying a used one would have been the 1.4TSI which at that time of manufacture was a twincharger! I convinced her to be content with a brand new factory order VW Polo 1.2TSI 110PS SEL, and so far so good, I have an Audi S4 a 2011 car so feeding one Audi is enough for any household! So I think that I dodged a bullet there by not buying a used A1 1.4TSI!

Seriously, I'm not convinced that there are any or many bombproof VW Group engines out there right now - especially any ones that are not Audi specific, my last car was a 2000MY VW Passat 4Motion - and that used an Audi 2.8 V6 30V 193PS and it did not give any problems over the 13 years and 97K miles I owned it, part of that logic is why I bought a 2.5 year old Audi S4 as its 3.0TFSI supercharged engine is only ever used by Audi and a few Porsche Macans. There are too many people on the Audi forums that have bought A4 2.0TFSI and these engines are failing as much as the 1.4TSI twincharger as well A4 with the 2.0TDI engines, and both these engines are in general use across the VW Group marques. I can only think that because these "Audi only" engines are costing more for customers, that there is enough money there to make them work a bit more reliably - that is my logic! It does seem that the 1.2TSI turbo only with belt driven cam shafts are a lot more reliable than the chain driven earlier versions.

My last big engine panics were when I bought Ford Escorts/Orions new in the 1980's as these CVH engine did feel that anything big going wrong would mean dumping them in a bin and buying a new one - that was what forced me to move away from Ford to VX and I bought a slightly used 1991 VX Cav GSI 2000 16V 4X4, a very competent car for its time and nothing like a normal VX Cav!
 
Last edited:

D'Marco

Active Member
Jun 19, 2018
4
0
Yea the GT86 is the Subaru co-developed one. Does that still count then? haha

It's pretty sad that VW seem to be a shadow of their former selves in terms of reliability. Especially as they do build some awesome cars!

My first car was a MK2 Orion 1.6i ghia complete with pepperpot alloys! Loved that car, but yea, not the most reliable lol. You'd think I would've learnt but then I bought a MK3 Fiesta RS1800 which was great, until the headgasket blew :(

Always liked the GSI Cav! I always preferred the look of the saloon over the hatchback with the MK3 Cav too. My Dad had a facelift hatch. Only a 1.6 ls but still quite a nice car in it's day.

My Toyota Corolla T Sport has easily been the most reliable car I've ever owned. Never skipped a beat. I owned it for 6 years and bar the usual wear and tear stuff, nothing needed doing at all. The timing chain Toyota used was engineered to outlast the engine as it should and I never came across one example of the chain stretching or snapping on the 3 forums I was a member of. And that was a car that had an 8200rpm redline and 2 cam profiles!
 

RUM4MO

Active Member
Jun 4, 2008
7,784
983
South Scotland
No, I was only showing my "immense" knowledge about cars when I mentioned Subaru, my older daughter's boyfriend muttered something about them and the low centre of gravity due to the boxer engine, I did not know that they had a boxer engine in them, so I've learned something new, he has a bad habit of buying Lotus cars, an old Esprit and an Elan it seems but major house rejigging is forcing him to get rid of which ever ones sell quickest. I hate rust, but somehow I think that I dislike plastic bodied cars even more, weird?

The only issue I have about Toyotas is there probably is not enough to complain about going wrong - VW Group and others could learn a lot from them.

Sorry to hear that you had issues with your RS1800, I thought at round about that time, Ford's only dodgy engine was the "interference" CVH 1.3/1.4/1.6, the USA version of CVH, the 1.8 that ended up in some European cars I believe was not an interference engine so a broken belt just meant engine stopped until retimed with a new belt.

I think that there is someone on the Audi forum that still keeps a MK2 Orion for fun, though I think that it has an RS1800 engine in it, so is really only taken out to go to car shows.
 

D'Marco

Active Member
Jun 19, 2018
4
0
Haha, I totally agree with you on the plastic bodies. Doesn't seem right does it?

I don't think it was a common problem with the head gaskets going on the RS1800s. It was just one of those things but a pain nonetheless. I still loved the car though.

Oooo, an Orion with an RS1800 engine sounds rather tasty!
 
Chris Knott Insurance - Competitive quotes for forum members