My Sport feels much better with premium, feels a bit sluggish with 87. But if I'm just doing a boring highway slog I'll fill up with 87 sometimes, and forget I did. One back roads you notice.
i too come from a background of audi and vw for the past 20 years and have switched between brand here and there. The early 1.8t of mkiV vw and b5 audi are actually bulled proof specially if kept stock or lightly modded. I had 97 a4 1.8t and it was nothing but reliable 135k miles and i really did nothing major to that car. I did mod that car also 24psi on a little k03 FOB and ran it like hell. Now given that not even those engine were made the same in every model and year,(AEB and AWD engine code where the better ones) they all performed the same. The problem came to ownership and who actually owned these cars and how they perceived them. This is true even in today's vw audi scene. prior to owning the A4 it was developing a slight sludge problem, so i asked the Original owner.. what was your oil interval ? believe it or not he said 7k miles in 2002.. wholyy fuck. that is not good. But this is s what the dealer recommend at that time. Cleaned the oil pain clean the valve cover, dead de slugge treatment, seafomed it once and whiile in my ownership i changed oil every 4k and it never became an issue , ran strong both in everyday and at the track . Moving forward to the TFSI/ TSi , this trend continued but now it was double trouble as carbon built up was introduced , the issue is very easily remedied with a catch can but in the long run you will have to decarb it, as cars ran like shit and because they waited so long now they had manifold flapper issue as the carbon was building in the flapper weighting them down and breaking the solenoid gears of the flapper so now you have three issue bcz of negligence and not knowing about the car. But in turn cars made really good power for mid 2000s hatch (2005)out of a little 2.0l with a tinyyy tiny turbo (ko3) stock was 200hp and 210tq with just an ots tune they were up to 250 260hp. and this was the 1st gen tsi. 2nd gen tsi has similar problem they changed the piston ring but mostly in the audi model as they tried to resolve the carbon issue, it came to bite them in the ass 3 out 10 audi 2.0t came to the shop with piston ring problem, some the dealer covered them most partly cover alot didn't, but this issue was isolated to audi only 98% of the time. vw on the other side had timing tensioner failures again made worst by owner following dealer recommending of this time.. drumroll.... 10k miles oil change!!! alot of time dealer covered these! On the vw Mk7 and audi (8V) with the 3rd gen tsi motor are actually pretty reliable i currently own a 1.8t 3rd gen tsi on a jetta i have 120+k miles and have nothing but good words about it i bought the car brand new and since then i only had to change a failing alternator at 85k and that was covered by the dealer. no tensioner issues, no carbon issues so far , although i know is building up and would have to do it some times but is something that comes with the territory it all dependents what you looking for and willing to live with. you want a 99% reliable car get an old camry, you want a full on luxury sport car get a Maserati .. it will empty your wallet sooner then its depreciation value.
