T_POLO

Hi. I've posted the below reply I got from the DVSA regarding pedal box issues (in my case a 2000 Polo MK3) for interest. I bought the car at 49K (2 prev owners), and at around 55500 miles the pedal box went. Apparently the DVSA have investigated this fault before and found that it doesn't count as a safety defect because it doesn't fail completely in one go on the cars with a lower spec than the GTI that got the recall. Frankly I find the penultimate sentence in the letter to be just plain wrong 'It was therefore determined that the driver would receive sufficient warning of the issue before it affected the operation of the clutch and gear selection.' Simply not true, the first time it breaks, there's absolutely no warning at all, none! So how is that safe?! If the driver is used to one biting point and the clutch pedal suddenly drops as mine did then you aren't going to push it down far enough & therefore won't be able to change gear until you realise what on earth's happened. Draw your own conclusions, but I'm of the opinion it's clearly a design fault and VW should have done a much better job designing it to last (which would also mean I wouldn't be down £400). From what I can tell looking on the VAG part finder it's the same part that failed on the GTI, but it's been deemed safe by the DVSA on all versions but the GTI. When I was dealing with them I just got excuses similar to those on the first page of this thread, and no admission that there was any issue with the design. Not impressed with VW.