They are now... 20 years ago they were building the highest quality cars you could buy. The build quality of the cars during Ferdinand Piëch's tenure of running the company such as the MKIV Golf/Jetta, early Touareg, etc. make high end cars like BMW and Mercedes products of the same era seem like cheap garbage. Those Piëch era cars will last another 100 years if people maintain them.... lots of TDI MKIV Golf and Jettas are running around with 500k+ reliable miles and holding up well. On the VW forums you see them lasting over 400k miles despite serious performance tuning, often doubling the horsepower.
