[fintstone]

My '04 TT had the fuel pump fail as well. Really not too unreasonable to happen once in 170k miles. All one has to do is pull the fuse for that pump and the car will switch to the second one...so no need to get stuck by the road. One should replace both while you are in there (downright malpractice for a wrench not to do so)...as the second one will probably fail soon after and you already are working in the same area under the back seat (one on either side of the hump). It is not a difficult DIY project. I paid an indy wrench to do mine...but he screwed it up a bit and I had to fix it myself (redo install) but it did not require additional parts. The fuel tank is like a saddle over the driveshaft hump and has a pump for each side.

I think I get about 14-16 MPG. It doesn't seem to care if I am towing a 911 on a trailer at 80mph or tooling around town. Maintenance is about the same as with any vehicle...it is just harder to find someone else to do it right for a reasonable price. I was initially scared to work on it....but now, treat it like the rest of the herd (once I broke down and bought a durametric to read/reset codes). I only get someone else to do the things I don't want to do. I just did the brakes myself and while the parts were massive (and not cheap)...the effort was not unreasonable. Straight forward once you have the unusual tools. I am weak on preventative maintenance...do not change the oil as often as I should, etc...but the car looks and drives like new at 16 years old 170K Mi. I bought it well optioned/used at just under 50k miles at much less than half original sticker price, so I really cannot complain.

It does use a lot of tires, but it is a heavy vehicle for the soft compound tires that most of us use. It is probably not that different from an similar sized performance vehicle.