joeg, you are quite right when you say that VW forums for small cars are not really very "tech wise", I'm a VW owner B5 Passat and 9N Polo and I find that Skoda owner/drivers are best followed by Seat owner/drivers and then VW owner/drivers - so don't feel like an outsider on this forum - its the same family after all. Good luck with trying to shame VAG though, I'm sure that they would improve if more people forced them to.
By the way, I mentioned this very
problem to the Seat salesman that my daughter bought her new
Ibiza SC from last month - nice and honest sounding guy, but he had never heard about this "out of warranty engine failure" - that did not surprise me though as even the dealer techs on these sites mainly have not seen any or many engines damaged by this failure. So it looks like the VAG dealer community just clamps up on this sort of
problem!