What you know about diesel mercedes?

[Scott]

And to be honest, you might get mid 30's out of this thing on the highway. $5K will get you a perfectly ok Honda Accord that will do the same.

^^ This. My old 5-speed 1994 Accord Ex would get 33-36 mpg all day with the cruise set at 75 and the AC on, all while using 87 octane. I miss that car sometimes...... I commute 200 miles a day and usually use a Miata...........

[SlimKlim]

So..I kind of gave up on this after not being able to find what I was interested in. What do you VW heads know about say, a 2009ish TDI..with or without the DSG? What if I tried to pick one up around 100-125k miles?

There was a fuss about hpfps and the entire fuel systems having to be replaced at ridiculous expense, but it seems like it was mostly from people putting regular unleaded in them. There are aftermarket kits that supposedly prevent it. http://2microntech.com/contain-flow-kit/

Otherwise they're pretty durable, I've seen tons for sale with 200k+. With the DSG you need to do a service every 40k and you risk losing the mechatronics unit, but VW also seems to be pretty shitty at making a regular clutch (the GTIs will kill a clutch in 10k miles with a tune), so pick your poison.

That being said it's still a VW.

[HAULN-SS]

I'm going to assume if a car has higher mileage, that's either not an issue or was already taken care of? I've mostly been looking at the tdi anyway. I've noticed a bunch of manuals that say needs a clutch, but good to know the service interval on the dsg.

[SlimKlim]

I'm going to assume if a car has higher mileage, that's either not an issue or was already taken care of? I've mostly been looking at the tdi anyway. I've noticed a bunch of manuals that say needs a clutch, but good to know the service interval on the dsg.

Seems like a logical assumption, but I shared pretty much all of my TDI knowledge in my other post, I wouldn't take me for an authority on the subject.

[BLINGMW]

Cannot comment on DSG as ours is manual like it should be, but we love our 2013 TDI. Gets 45 to 55 MPG (52 typically on highway) even though it's huge and heavy, which starts to make the turbo diesel hassles/concerns worthwhile. Damn thing will go 900+ miles per tank. Doesn't hurt that diesel is finally below regular gas price at some stations.
And I heard similar about the HPFP issues, often due to misfueling. And gassers with direct injection have them too, so I think they're getting fairly commonplace and the prices keep coming down. It'll be a few hundred bucks if/when you need one.
Make sure any used one has been getting the fuel filter changed on schedule.