Once again, I could not agree with you more.
Now double that WRT the turbo’d ones. (yeah, that’ll start another fight, I reckon)
I once owned a German-built Opel. A 1900 sedan(think they called it an Ascona over in the Fatherland) Absolutely the Best Damn Car I have ever owned! Had FI, rear-wheel-drive, great fun on a mountain road. Couldn’t kill it with a cannon-and you couldn’t give ‘em away. Ask most any other owner, they were the biggest POS ever made. But not this one. Go figure.
Fantastic in every way until the day the neglected tranny lube ran comepletely out, locked up in a curve, slid into the path of a Mercedes and we hit head on. I walked away but I still miss that car.
Not really starting another fight there - the US-market VAG engines are different than the ones they use elsewhere; the ones we get are crap and not nearly so well engineered as the ones they ship in Europe.