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I should add that that particular year range of the Passat is only available (North America at least) in a manual car.
I'm sure we could sit and argue many different "reliable" marques vs many different "unreliable" marques and be able to pull up numerous examples proving both ideas to be sound. If I mention Alfa Romeo and how many people consider that marque to be so unreliable, but myself have witnessed one particular car running and driving very nicely until it was deemed just a bit dated and put on the back burner. I bough the car with 200,000 miles and put another HARD 100,000+ on the clock before moving to my A4 for daily duty. The only major work done during my ownership was a transmission rebuild but not because it needed it but instead to modify the internals for better shifting (lightened the gears to prevent the usual Alfa grunch when shifting into second).
I'm currently working on a '82 VW truck conversion with a TDI engine installed, working out the minor details the shop couldn't. Also have a couple Jettas both are Mk2's that are racking up some miles. The '85 was picked up without an engine and we opted for a AAZ 1.9 from Europe to give it a slight performance increase. The '91 we picked up not running with a head gasket failure and with nothing more than installing a new head gasket we're able to drive that around as well. Oh yea, odometer on that was 750,000 if at all accurate. The early VW Mk2's and I would venture to guess Mk3's had spotty odometers. Not a huge deal in my eyes.
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