Message:
I read with great interest your posting on your Rialta experience. Very unfortunate. I just became the second owner of a 95 Rialta that has 96,000 miles and is still going quite well. I have made a number of minor repairs since purchasing it last month, but most of the problems were created by the previous owner's last trip which was to Alaska. There were many items that needed to be tightened and it needed a tune-up. I would say that I have spent less than $300 to put the vehicle back in good shape, but I also do most of the work myself. I wanted to send you this to let you know that not all Rialta owners have had bad luck like you because I believe that my Rialta may be the highest mileage unit out there on the road. Besides Alaska, it has been to all of the 48 "lower" states. I live on Cape Cod and contacted VW about an authorized VW repair facility that could work on the VW portion of the unit and the closest to where I live is about 125 miles in Rochester, New Hampshire. Fortunately I found a local repair shop that will work on the vehicle and they are very good (German auto specialists), but they would not be able to do warrantee repair work, but when you have a 5 year old vehicle with 96,000 the warrantee no longer applies. The owner of the local repair shop told me that there are very few VW Eurovans over here in the states because they are very expensive. He also said that they usually last a very long time and it would not be unreasonable to expect to get 200,000+ miles with reasonable care. That was encouraging. I am glad that VW gave you the satisfaction of repurchasing a vehicle that you were very unhappy with. Thanks for the informative posting. Bob