Just thought I would drop in a summary of our feelings and experiences of our Tig after 2 years 11 months and about 55,000 ks on the odo. Manual, TDI, base model.

Likes:
  • still nice to drive
  • good seating space front and back
  • middle rear seat is reasonably comfortable
  • (diesel) fuel efficiency is good
  • we are, in general, very pleased with our purchase
  • seats are comfortable (I used to get sore back in the old car (prado) on long distances, not in the Tig in any of the four main seats and even the middle rear is pretty good for the first few hundred ks.
  • excellent car for beginner drivers, good seating position, interesting enough to drive, full safety alphabet soup
  • it has been a good car for us (single car family of 5 with two teenagers now driving), at times smaller than would be ideal, but this is for just a few percent of trips (if that) and we knew this but thought we could deal with this by trailers, pods, bike racks etc in order to optimize the car size for the 99% of trips - and this is how it has worked out.


Reliability:
  • been pretty good so far but two warranty issues in the last month (just coming up to end of 3 year warranty) is a bit of a worry.
  • one warranty call for hard to latch front passenger seat belt (after about 6 months I think)
  • one warranty call for rear door unlatching switch (the hand switch on the boot door) hard to operate - seems switch came off bracket or bracket was flexing/bent. We were not rough on it. (I would be interested to know if this is a design issue and others are getting increasingly difficult to operate rear doors). This was just recently.
  • another warranty call, just recently, for engine block/exhaust warning light and MDF alert. Car drove OK, no-one of our 4 drivers noticed any driveability issue. Fault was "flap for the throttle body" according to service invoice. Discussion with service rep said there was a small leak of oil or lubricant and this was causing miss readings on the fly-by-wire throttle. This one is a bit concerning actually, given the potential for mis-reading of the driver's desired throttle setting and the engine doing something different from the driver request.
  • battery has had to be replaced (after about 2.5 years)
  • tyres (stock as delivered) had to be replaced after about 47,000k. A bit less than we are used to.


Dislikes:
  • foot brake takes a bit of getting used to in order to provide a comfortable ride for passengers. It is close to a "digital" brake - either on or off. It requires quite a deft touch to make for a smooth ride. But this is learnt soon enough.
  • Small boot, but it has not been a huge issue for us. We use a roof pod(s) when necessary. We also have removed the foam surround around the spare and use the extra space to store rarely used stuff.
  • still very nervous about the space saver spare - though we have not had to use it yet (we do end up on plenty of dirt and rural remote roads)
  • rear boot light is crap - worse than none as it shines in your eyes (affecting night vision) but does not effectively illuminate the boot area
  • sun visors - these are most annoying. They will not stay where you put them. If you push then way forward so they are close to the glass, and so out of sight line, but still blocking the sun, they just slowly droop back to hang vertical and make you have to drop your head to see under them. This is a design flaw in my view. Not good at all.
  • Some of our drivers don't like the electric park brake, but the L and P plate drivers are OK with it. My wife doesn't like it. I am Ok with it, except I distrust more electrical things that could fail when we are a bit remote.


We fitted an Chinese no-name GPS/sound/DVD etc player. Has worked fine. This was not the one that drained battery through the CAN bus connection.

I am interested in whether our experiences are typical