Ok, this is me...back before I actually owned a VW TDI. Ok, truth be told, I still pretty much look the same. ;-)

Realistically, I love the car and it's glacier blue exterior, even if the suspension components fail in comparison to cars of my past (KW suspension has a fix for that!).

Upon hearing of the VW conspiracy, as first I thought...

...hmmm... that's interesting. 

Then I thought...

...wow, so that's how you destroy a trademark name!

Then I REALLY started thinking, often along my two hour commute (one hour each way) to work and back.

So with just under 50k miles on my 2013 VW Passat TDI SEL, and having owned the car (second hand) for just short of 14 months now (purchased in the end of November 2014, with ~26k miles) I've already been through two (two) services.

One day, on my way home from work, I thought about some of the oddities that I've experienced.

I noticed that before my first service, I had to add more Adblue to the tank, as the car's computer came up complaining that it was about to run dry in about 700 miles...which is somewhere between 5 to 7 day for me.

After adding more Adblue, I was able to run approximately another 6000 - 7000, or so, miles before I had to add more Adblue. Then the 40k service came due...almost a week after VW admitted to cheating on the emissions tests. Yeah, I was wondering (since I'm in Germany) if they were going to "fix" my car's emissions falacy. Time would tell...

Not sure what "else" they did, but noticed that my gas mileage has gone down, and that the remote start on the car doesn't work any more. Nah...that can't be right... Right?!? Wrong, had a couple of days where I was able to pull 55 MPG! Now I'm having problems getting over 50 MPG, with is usually being in the high 30's to low 40's. Hmmm...so much for the money savings...but acts against nature, like spewing up to 4x the allowed emissions norm is pretty heinous!

But then I started to think even more. Hmmmm...maybe I'm wrong but could...

1) Less Adblue usage mean less wear and tear on things like the expensive components of the exhaust system (catalytic converters to name 2)?

2) More Adblue usage lead to more part failures, like parts of the Adblue delivery system?

3) A hotter running exhaust lead to other long term engine issues associated with the additional heat? (ok, I thought originally that maybe this one's a bit of a stretch, but then my wife reminded me of how hot the car would sometimes get and how the heat would radiate from underneath the car. So seeing as how heat associated things tend to be interrelated with part failure...)

What else could be behind this, that would eventually lead to lining VW's pockets with more of my hard earned dinero? Hmmmm...like Arsenio Hall used to say, "Things that make you go hmmmm..."