I think your mileage will vary. I have had 3 water-cooled VW's, an '86 Jetta Wolfsburg, another '86 Jetta, and the wife's 01 Bug and some experience with other, newer VW's.
I drove the Wolfsburg for a couple years. Even though it had 140k miles and just a plain old 8V 4 cylinder, it started every time. I didn't have any problems with door handles like a lot of people do, never did any suspension or brake work even though it was majorly lowered. I would say that my one data point for 80's VW's compared to 80's domestics left a favorable impression. But I could have been lucky - I got all the paperwork since new with the Jetta so it obviously had been well cared for. The other '86 I don't really mention because I never drove it extensively.
The Bug was something of a different story. I must have put 20 headlight bulbs in the thing (and the dealer wanted $60 each.... ha!) until I tried an extra ground wire and voila, no more problems. Poor VW design, undersized wiring. The headlight housing was an extremely poor design, with an overly complicated plastic retaining mechanism that was mostly inaccessible. I had to destroy one of the headlights to get it out. The engine suffered from various misfires and maladies although I traced this down to spark plug wires that would mysteriously come loose (and I used factory replacement parts). The bracket that holds the upper intake manifold cracked (how, I don't know) and it was impossible, from my judgment, to get to without major work. The interior had this soft vinyl coating on the plastic pieces... which apparently would develop leprecy with age. The seats used some kind of fabric that would water stain if you looked at it wrong. Of course most of these did not affect driveability or reliability but they were things I considered unacceptable in a modern car and also examples of the nickel and dimeing that I had heard about with VW cars.
Additionally the local dealer is a douche so I had to become the chief mechanic for VW's in our household. And on newer ones some of that stuff is impossible to diagnose without the fancy VAG tool (ha... not even making that name up).
This is of course my limited experience and anecdotal. I know people with newer VW's that have never had a problem (or if they have, they are too embarrassed or proud to admit). Also if the nickel and dime things don't concern you, then your frustration might be far less than someone OCD like me. Just my $.02.