Patrick Beeson

A car's break-in period is an excruciatingly painful time in your driving life. You shouldn't shift about 3,000 RPM; you shouldn't use your cruise control; you shouldn't drive at speeds over 70 MPH; and the list goes on.

All of these items are detailed quite nicely in the owner's manual. The GTI, for instance, recommends following these restrictions until you hit 600 miles. At that point, you can gradually let the car play a bit harder. When you hit 1,000 miles, let it loose.

There are those that say the usual break-in period is nonsense. And there are a lot of forum threads on the this topic.

My GTI was very tight during the first 300 miles. I have the six-speed manual, and dropped the clutch on several occassions -- you should have heard the cussing -- because of the stiffness (or perhaps because I had been driving an automatic for two months prior). At 600 miles however, things have loosened up nicely and I'm getting miles-per-gallon in the 25 to 32 range. I averaged almost 32 from Roanoke to Greensboro, NC this weekend.

I think the "Car Talk" guys probably have the best advice (and reason) for following the break-in period for your car:

Ray: Actually, we can't say for certain what will happen to YOUR car if you don't break it in properly, but I can tell you the widely accepted theory. The piston rings don't fit the cylinders absolutely perfectly when the car comes off the assembly line. Why? Because the spaces in between the two are tens of thousanths of an inch. So the break-in period is supposed to be a time in which you drive gently and allow the rings to "seat," or mold themselves perfectly to the exact shapes of the cylinder walls.

Tom: If the rings don't "seat" well during break-in, the theory is that your car will burn oil later on, because the poorly seated rings will eventually let oil sneak by and get into the cylinders. Is it true? Yeah, probably. Although it's less true than it used to be.

Ray: Manufacturing technology has improved so much over the years that the rings (and all the other engine parts) come off the assembly line fitting pretty darned well. And overdrive transmissions further reduce the risk by allowing engines to turn slowly at highway speeds. So where, in the old days, a good break-in might have made the difference between your engine lasting 35,000 or 70,000 miles, now it might make the difference between your engine lasting 100,000 and 200,000 miles.