Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, located north of the Cheshire Plain and south and west of the Pennines, with an estimated population of 545,000.

Manchester is a popular cultural centre, with performing arts and live music venues that include the Palace Theatre, Manchester Opera House, the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester Arena and Manchester Academy.

Manchester has provided iconic bands such as The Smiths, Joy Division, The Verve, M People and The 1975, and in the height of the 1980s the ‘Madchester’ scene gave us The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets and James.

Canal Street has been the home for an LGBTQ+ community since 1940, with bars and clubs attracting around 20k visitors each weekend, and the Manchester Pride festival is celebrated every August.

It wouldn’t be fair to talk about Manchester without mentioning the city’s football rivalry: you’re either blue or you’re red, City or United—with both teams holding an extensive list of silverware and titles.

The most popular cars in Manchester

The Mercedes A-Class is estimated to be the most popular car in Manchester, according to data provided between 2012 to 2018 by ownership and postcode.

Close on its heels—and in order of popularity—are the Volkswagen Golf, Volkswagen Polo, Mercedes C-Class Saloon and Nissan Qashqai.

Vehicle numbers in Manchester

There are approximately 218,000 licensed vehicles in Manchester, with some of the most popular models including the Mini, Ford Kuga and the Kia Sportage.

Find a Fixter garage in Manchester today

There are a total of 38 Fixter garages in the Manchester area, all ready and waiting to provide you with a fantastic quote for your car service, MOT and a wide range of vehicle repairs.

Fixter garages service the following postcodes and more, in and around the Manchester area:

• M1 & M2: City Centre, Deansgate, Castlefield & Piccadilly, Manchester
• M4: Ancoats, Northern Quarter & Strangeways, Manchester
• M8: Crumpsall & Cheetham Hill, Manchester
• M9: Harpurhey & Blackley, Manchester
• M11: Clayton, Openshaw & Beswick, Manchester
• M12: Ardwick, Longsight & Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester

Volkswagen

Volkswagen (often shortened to VW) is a German automobile manufacturer founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front, a Nazi labour union.

Volkswagen is the flagship marque of the Volkswagen Group, who in turn is majority owned by Porsche. They own and operate a vast number of cars under other brand names—at the time of writing, they have 342 subsidiary companies.

How popular is Volkswagen in the United Kingdom?

Possibly its most well-known model of the current generation, the VW Golf, was the 2nd best selling car of 2018, behind the Ford Fiesta, which consistently takes the top spot year after year.

The Golf’s 64k registrations in 2018 added to the vast tally of 3.4million Volkswagen cars on the road today.

High quality, highly rated, appropriately priced cars

VW cars achieve consistently strong reviews and are highly respected by critics and drivers alike. They are renowned for investing more money into research and development than almost any other marque and distributing their wealth of motoring knowledge across the many partner brands under the VW Group umbrella.

The Volkswagen Beetle: The ‘people’s car’

A classic of its time, originally named the Volkswagen Type 1, it soon became nicknamed the Beetle due to its unique shape, and subsequently the bug. The unique looking car was designed by Ferdinand Porsche for Adolf Hitler, who wanted a cheap and simple mass-produced car to travel around his country’s new road network.

The new model Beetle, originally launched to celebrate the original classic in 1997, and with an updated successor in 2011, was designed around the VW Jetta platform sharing much of its build with the Jetta and Golf. VW announced in 2018 that the Beetle would finally be removed from production in July 2019.

VW’s reliability and reputation

Volkswagen ranked 17th place out of 30 car brands in the What Car? Reliability Survey in 2018. Sister companies Skoda and Seat appeared higher up the ranks at 7th and 10th respectively, while executive brand Audi a few places further down the list at joint 20th.

Recent Volkswagen recalls and reliability issues

Various recalls have been made on VW models throughout their motoring history. The following are a list of the most recent in the UK and Europe.

19/04/2019 – VW Tiguan (2017–2018)

The material used for the rear coil springs may be inadequate

13/04/2019 – VW Touareg (2018)

The suspension damper forks are defective and could break

13/04/2019 – VW Caddy (2018)

The predetermined break point in the cushion for the side airbags in on the wrong side

24/03/2019 – VW Polo (2016–2018)

On vehicles with a rear drum brake, the operational wear of the brake lining and use-related settlement of the drum brake may result in a loss of pre-tension on parking brake cables

02/02/2019 – VW Touareg (2018)

A seat belt latch may not have been sufficiently secured to the rear, right-hand seat

23/12/2018 – VW Golf, VW T-Roc, VW Arteon and VW Passat (2018)

The fitting for the headrest may have been incorrectly welded to the backrest

23/12/2018 – VW T-Roc (2018)

An incorrect adhesive bond between the upper and lower parts of the rear spoiler may have been used

20/10/2018 – VW Touran and VW Tiguan (2015–2018)

Moisture can reach the LED module of the sunroof’s ambient lighting which may cause a short-circuit

All recall information sourced from gov.co.uk data.