[osidak]

intake clogging and vnt issues tend to be a function of how you drive the car. Drive it like a grandma (lugging the engine a lot) will mean more issues with intake cleaning and vnt's getting stuck. Drive it with a little more gusto and you will seldom have issues.

When my car died at the hands of a Ford F250 it had ~ 250,000 miles and the intake was virtually clean and had zero issues with the vnt. I have cleaned intakes and vnt's on cars with as few as 60K miles. The good news though is that you can clean the intake in about 2 hours work and the vnt is generally more robust so it takes more abuse to begin with.

Rear bearings in my experience has been pretty solid unless you run over size wheels and had nasty roads. At which point the rear beam gets a tweak to it and the bearings go in short order.

I replaced 9 window regulators in my car until they revised the part and I stopped having to replace mine and when I installed them in other cars no more issues.

Turbos themselves tend last as long as you feed them good oil. I have replaced maybe 4 turbos in the past 15 years - the lowest mileage one was around 270,000 miles and judging from the cam lobes they where using crappy oil and waiting to long between changes. Now reading the forums will lead you to believe a lot more turbos have puked. VW has been quick to call a drop in power a turbo fault when in real life the issue was else where.

BEW is a PD engine. The block is essentially the same as the ALH and every 1.9l engine before it. The head changes to accommodate the PD fuel system. Little more power yes but the fuel economy drops. The biggest issue is the cam lobes are smaller as you now have 3 for each cylinder crammed in the same space (injector, intake, exhaust). The lobes become to narrow and wear faster. If not caught soon enough it damages the injectors and that get EXPENSIVE really fast. Oh and with the PD cars you also pick up a lift pump in the tank. Those tend to crap out when you least want them to and then all you can do it idle until you replace it. On the plus side for the PD engines - the act of changing the timing belt is easier in general (few parts more access) it is a little tougher to get the timing spot on.

Outside of body/interior issues that you seem to be aware of there are no real show stoppers with the engine or manual transmission. There are some issues with leaking pumps but as long as the leak is in the upper portion or the pump head it is an simple DIY fix. If it is the mid section it is a bit trickier and I would suggest letting a BOSCH shop take care of it.