You may have had some kind of pre-production EV. Ours has almost 95,000 miles on
it and thou it does have some piston slap noise when cold it is quite quiet and
very smooth when warmed up.
In fact this is the smoothest VW engine I have ever had (out of 5 water cooled)
Compression is still at 180-190 psi and oil consumption is at about 1 qt/5000
miles.

There have been posts on the list about the EV front motor mount breaking and
causing lots of vibration. Maybe this is what you experienced.

In the US only 93 EV's were available. But Campers were avail from 93-95. Both
had the 5 cylinder and either a 5 sp or automatic trans

In 97 they brought only the camper back with the VR6 and only automatic trans.

In the rest of the world there is a very large variety of EV's from diesels to
syncros. Just not here.

Some have said that we will see a new EV in 2001 based on the audi longitudinal
V6. Wait and see.