Brake pads OEM Toyota or OEM Volkswagen

For pads I went with OE quality ones as they were under half the price of VW and a decent brand.

114k still on factory brakes all around!

Brakes are good

I just had my sister-in-law's 2008 Highlander in my garage on Sunday after she professed that at 150k miles that the brakes were finally making some noise. I ordered a round of rotors and pads and intended to spend a few hours replacing the brakes and the blower motor for the front, as it has been a bit inconsistent in operation. I put the Highlander up on jackstands and pulled the wheels off, and the brakes looked like they had about 10k miles on them.. I was just stunned. I ended up just putting some brake squeal compound on the back of the pads and sent her on her way. They are truly robust and under-rated vehicles.

Also, brakes are really good. They dust like hell, but stop the car well and feel good doing it. Confidence inspiring.

If you get a mk7, get the lighting and performance pack. The headlight performance is astonishing. The performance pack brakes are amazing not to mention how sweet the diff is on a back road.

Same, with a 2015 on stage 2 tune it can be pretty quick and on road trips with the cruise set to 70 it can pull some pretty fantastic fuel economy.

My brakes are also "grabbier" and harder to modulate than my '16 GTI (312mm), which had great brake feel.

Here is a shot of the front brakes. They're quite worn, below the legal acceptable thickness for a Phaeton and showing hairline cracks on the inside, the pads are also fairly shot.

Whenever I talk to people they don't say too much about reliability, but what they do say is how they hate the maintenance costs with VWs. $100+ oil changes, paying for maintenance items off warranty at dealer (brakes), etc.