Living with a Scirocco 1.4 TSI 160 (118kW)

So recently I finally decided it was time to retire my previous long suffering car – a 2003 1.4L Mk1 Seat Leon I’ve had for 10 years! When I bought the car in 2009 it had 62,000 miles on the clock, now it has 198,000 miles on it and needs to be run on 10W40 rather than the specified 5W30 just to stop the engine rattling. The Seat did well but it had a hard life including 3 years commuting 400 miles a week and had got to the point where I was fully expecting it to fail sooner or later and wanted something that wasn’t as underpowered.

So I started looking about for another car and the new style Scirocco caught my eye. After looking for a while I found a decent condition version with reasonable mileage, service history and not reaching a high bid. Detail on this car was a little lacking as it was just described as a 1.4 TSI but the car had no engine/spec badges (a factory option from VW) so I wasn’t sure which version it actually was but on the basis it wasn’t advertised as the higher power option it would be the lower power turbo only 122 bhp model. So I went for it and got it for a decent price. When I arrived to collect it having never actually seen it before I checked it and found the identifying sticker in the boot which showed the power as 118kW, this is 160bhp so I’d got the more powerful one.

This is both a blessing and a curse because while obviously it goes better the 160bhp version also have a reputation for unexpectedly experiencing catastrophic engine failure.

That said always take forum posts on the internet with a pinch of salt – people rarely take to the internet as much when their car works perfectly.

By this point its too late to back out so I’m now the owner of a Scirocco with a 1.4L engine! So now I start looking into things I need to watch out for. The engine is the first interesting thing here as it’s both supercharged and turbocharged to give a much better low down grunt than expected from such a small engine with supercharger boost while still having a wider power curve by the turbo taking over at about 3000 rpm and working higher up. The engine peaks out at about 1.5 Bar of boost (22 PSI) from the factory. This system obviously adds complexity and potential points of failure with various valves and clutches to make it all work so a number of things to keep an eye on.

VW Technical guide to this engine available here

Clearly we’re playing with a fairly highly strung engine so my first thought is what the maintenance schedule on these was like. People tend to ignore their cars so long as they keep working and from my previous 1.4 VW engine in my Seat I’m aware they have some issues with oil consumption. On my first look at some of the reports of damage online most seemed to mention failures that could easily be a result of oil starvation. Again, something to keep an eye on.

Moving beyond the engine that car itself is fairly advanced as well. These cars come as standard with adaptive suspension designed to react to road conditions. It has four sports seats which are very comfortable and the boot is quite reasonable for this type of car. Internally the Scirocco is very similar (depending on model year) to either a mark 5 or mark 6 Golf but is a bit less practical due to the style of the vehicle and lower roof line. That said I’ve had four full grown adults in mine and while it’s not hugely roomy it’s comfortable enough.

Now for the the but – I think mine was cheap partly because it has none of the extras. It doesn’t have cruise control, it doesn’t have HID headlights, it doesn’t have the more common 18″ ‘turbine’ wheels (I have the 17″ shown above), no DAB radio and no bluetooth. Other than the twincharged engine its a basic model and for most people that would be all there is to it but that’s not how I work. I will improve it as I go along and hopefully record how I do it all on here!