I do agree with you Mirage, VW does offer excellent quality ...but still, Skoda is able to offer similar levels of quality for a much better price -- the reality is, the reason VWs cost more is because they are made in Germany -- as it said in the article, Eastern European wages are 20% of those in Western Europe --VWs prices come down to production costs much more than product superiority -- it is the same for many other German-made products. German labour and industrial regulations are just so damn expensive.