the electronic handbrake is one that comes up regularly
I mean who needs an electronic hand break? FFS. Why do manufactueres keep giving us this shit. Anyway a small motor (similar to what you find in a drill driver) drives the piston in on the rear caliper to apply the hand break. When you release it on a hill a computer calculates the angle of the car and the torque required to hold the car and releases when the required torque is applied, so I'm told.
Fella at work had one. He parked it on a hill across from a petrol station. He applied the hand break, got out and locked the car. A few mintes later the car rolled down the hill, across the road and crashed into the petrol station. He got it all fixed up, but 6 mnths later the brake fault lamp was back up and the hand break doesn't work again.
Owners manual now advises to park in gear with wheels turned towards kerb. Good hand-break huh?
VW quoted 400 quid to fix. Basically 400 quid for the bit with the motor that bolts onto the calliper. After having loads of trouble with the car he just wanted rid of it. He brought the motor bit into our workshop to see if we could fix it and get rid of his fault lamp.
What happens is part of the casing splits down the side, shit gets in and it seizes up. The gearbox ratio is crazy in it, so you can't turn shaft that drives the calliper in to try and free off the sealed motor. You can actually strip it, clean it all and rebuild but you may destroy it in doing so. Anyway we just stuck it in a vice, filled it with tri-flow and left to soak. Stuck a De-Walt 18v battery on the end of it, big flash and away it went again (forget bench power supplies etc. you need a powerful battery to drive it) A bit of super glue down the crack, he bolted it on and the hand break works again. The Passat was traded in 4 days later.
Anyway has nobody mentioned Skoda? Octavia is same platform and running gear as the Golf, but stretched out a bit - bigger. Decent sized car, looks good too, drives like any VAG group car. Petrol VRS would be my choice, but 170BHP diesel VRS version is ideal for bigger milages. 140BHP diesel L&K version very nice too. Forget Audi, silly prices for much the same thing.