$20000 for an Avensis wagon 2008, manual

well ring the place i think its called miles or something in south island. Dont know how good they are but there shop looked like it was close to giltrap means unfortunately nothing when you got morons employed for example.

Yeah. I know which one will last over 200,000km.

My sister had a 2010 DSG Golf and been to VW workshop 7 times to fix the stupid gearbox - they replaced the gearbox at the last visit.!

And that's scraping the bottom of the barrel

Audi/VW/Skoda are all the same company using the same engines etc.

If you have an older A6 though those tend to be a bit more service intensive with shorter service intervals etc.

Also, it will depend on which engine you get as some are chain driven etc.

However what really counts is the difference in service costs between the Avensis and the Passat. Realistically over time if you service both cars by the book the Passat should be if anything fractionally cheaper. This is because the Passat has longer service intervals.

Parts prices should be much of a muchness as is reliability between the two.

Just be carefull with the Audi/VW/Skoda, its very easy to take these to "prestige" type outfits for servicing which charge you an arm and a leg. Generally a good independent VW specialist or even a competent general garage is the way to go.

Assuming you got the most expensive version to service (which would be the 2.0 FSI or 2.0 Turbo version) expect to pay about $1800 every 5 years for a BIG service (cambelt, tensioners, waterpump, brake fluid, coolant, plugs etc) then whatever they charge for basic oil/filter changes in between ($300!). Depending on milage you will likely only need to do those basic in between services every 1-2 years. This assumes you buy a manual one, or a 7 speed DSG. If you buy a Diesel with the 6 Speed DSG transmission add about $450 to the "Big Service" cost to get that done. You would likely pay similar to service the transmission in the Avensis if you didn't get a manual one of those too.

Realsisticaly, no car is going to be significantly cheaper to service. You may get people who try and pretend they exist, but generally you will find they are advocating not servicing the car as recommended by the manufacturer.

Servicing a car as recommended is cheap insurance IMO.

If you want to save money, you would be better to consider the Diesel Passat as that will actually offer you some real world running cost savings. Resale value is usually better when they get older with Diesel ones too, so it would save you in depreciation as well.

Also, if you ask to have the service counter put on "variable intervals" with the VW it will monitor your driving and the engine and adjust the service intervals to suit. That means that you may get up to 2 years/38'000km between minor services, depending on how it is driven.

DSG gearbox is a very clever design - it has a mind of its own and give it time it will become self aware and fight back any human intervention.