I'm sure I've said this before, and I daresay they have improved a bit over the years, but the one-and-a-half German cars I have owned were both a weird mixture of the excellent and the ridiculous. I'm not in a great hurry to have another one of them.
Take my VW Golf. In those days, it was considered possible to to make a small, fuel-efficient engine that had good low-down grunt, or a small, fuel-efficient engine that had nice top-end get up and go, but not both. You could have a powerful, revvy little thing that was gutless off the line and needed to be rowed along with the gearstick, or you could have a high-torque design that was very drivable untill you poured some revs on and nothing happened. The combination was impossible - except that Herr Volkswagen said "Acch, this iz not so difficult, I build one by Tuesday".
In those days it was considered impossible to make a front-wheel-drive car that went around corners in an acceptable manner, but Herr Volkswagen said "Acch, this is simple task for German engineering" and built that too. In the days when most cars used to rust out, wear out, and generally fall apart, Herr Volkswagen made one that didn't.
Figuring out how to get a big space inside a small body without making the whole thing too flimsy, that was another very challenging task that the Germans managed with ease. So far so good. On the difficult things, my first German car was amazingly competent. But on the easy things .... of dear.
When you got down to the minor stuff, the Golf was astonishingly badly designed. Making quarter-vent window mounts that worked properly, for example: Herr Volkswagen said "Acch, this iz too difficult! People in other countries have only been making practical quarter vent windows for 30 years, we cannot do zis". And so the quarter vents fell out after six months of Aussie sunshine because the idiots glued them to the mounting brackets, and used a glue that was neither strong nor durable. (People have known about making quality epoxys since about 1930.)
The layout of the controls and instruments was appalling. The little odds-and-ends things were scattered around at random, you couldn't see the speedo needle without moving either your head or your hand away from the natural position, the headlight switch was hard to find, stuff like that. Mercifully, I've forgotten most of the details now, but that car used to anoy me with little stupid things every time I drove it. It was absolutely infuriating to see such a wonderful little car ruined by an inability to do things that the much-despised Japanese could do in their sleep, and even the Australians could get right.
My second German car is a bitza: designed in Germany, Australian engine, built (I think) in Spain, but the now-usual GM mix of parts from everywhere. Still counts as German, I guess, as that is where they claim the design was done - and I have every reason to believe them, as it bears all the same hallmarks of genius and stupidity that Herr Volkswagen showed me back in the Eighties.
OK, the dynamics are terrible, but I don't blame them for that: they just didn't want to spend the money, and didn't figure it would ever get used outside of city traffic. But that tiny 1.3 litre motor is superb, the transmission is sweet, the space efficiency is awesome, and the fuel efficiency is so good it's laughable. All the hard stuff (bar high-speed dynamics) done with every appearance of ease.
But once again, the easy stuff - stuff I could do myself, given a Tuesday afternoon free and a pencil - they mess up. The position of the steering wheel relative to the seat and the pedals is wrong (the Golf was the same). The digital clock can't show proper hours, only those horrible damn 24 things. You can't see what speed you are doing without moving your hand. There is no courtesy light on the glove-box. The headlight dipper is badly placed and counter-intuitive, the indicators are on the wrong side (which, in my view, ought to be illegal), and so on.
Next time, if I have any sense, I'll buy Japanese.
