And, on the subject of manufacturers who historically have produced some pretty good engines, I've always held Honda engines in high regard - some were better than others but all served their purpose pretty well and efficiently. I've just been reading about a cambelt failure on one of their newer wee - 3 cylinder I think - turbo petrol engines. Apparently its a "run in oil" type belt! Come on Honda, you can do an awful lot better than that!
Good news is VAG used them for about 8 years as well on 2.0d.
They had a standard timing belt...and a wet belt oil pump.
This means you can have the full wetbelt experience without buying a car that's known to have a wet belt although the failure mode seems to be the same as usual. I.e. the belt blocks the oil pick up if left too long and grenades the engine.