Volkswagen Passat 2.0 TDI Sport DSG

I bought a passat 2007,2.0 TDI sport with 140bhp last year with full dealer service history. At 67000 miles the gearbox broke down completely. Cost to repair £4000. This car is useless, worst car I have ever owned. Wouldn't recommend it to anyone, gear box is jerky or should I say was. Totally rubbish, poor quality engineering.

i bought this car 3 month ago automatic DSG whiten few days i notice jerk at start in traffic, took it back to dealer he kept the car for all day just change oil and filter, but that did not fix the shi... took it back and this time he did not wanted to know.

after 2 month ended up spending 4000 pound on new gearbox and ECU

please stay away from this junk.

Bought a Passat 2.0L TDI estate from new. All fine until this summer. At 70000 miles car broke down and had to be collected by roadside assist. Diagnosed as fuel injector failure. New unit and loom fitted £750 out of pocket. Then the big one! One month later, heading north on M1 at 75mph. Sudden major loss of power , huge volumes of black smoke, crawl along hard shoulder to services. 2nd roadside recovery (Note I had never had to have a 'get me home' assist in 35 years of motoring previously!)

After lengthy spell in garage, replacement engine and turbo-charger required. One of the plastic butterfly valves/flaps in the manifold which re-directs exhaust back into engine had fractured allowing plastic fragements to enter engine with disastrous results. Engine a write off. I'm not happy especially with VW Customer Services attitude as in well it's out of warranty etc. Anyone else had similar? Andy

I took on my Passat 2.0 TDI 170PS Sport DSG as a company car when joining a new firm. Wasn't initially happy because I had a Merc E220d auto at my last company and saw the Passat as a step backwards. Hoever, within a few days of ownership I had really fallen for the car. The performance is really good, and the DSG is far better than the Merc auto box. I like the auto hold hand brake option, which when combined with the DSG makes driving in traffic a doddle. I have three teenage kids and they fit in the back with ease. The boot is also big enough for all our stuff. I have done 32,000 miles in 12 months I have had the car and I can't fault the car from a driving point of view. The DSG enables you to breeze along smoothly in Drive mode or put it in to Sport mode and tear around using the paddle shift or gear stick to change manually. Great fun. From a service point of view VW have been excellent. Not had a single fault with the car. Unfotunatly my time with this car is coming to an end due to the age, picked a VW Tiguan to replace it.

I have to respond to 'Travelog9's review. I fully understand that you haven't experienced any of the problems that have been reported here and on numerous other forums.

However, the problem that anyone who is considering purchasing a Passat Diesel with DSG 'box should be aware of is that if they encounter jerkiness when pulling away, reversing and putting it into gear as I and seemingly hundreds of others have, you will fail in your attempts to get VW to accept that the problem exists and as a result you will not get it fixed!

Mine has been into three garages over the past 19 months and on one occasion a new 'Mechatronic unit' was fitted, but the problem is still there. And I'm sick and tired of apologising to my passengers for the jerkiness and banging as the car pulls away.

The same gearbox in my wife's 2007 Audi TT 2.0TFSI is perfect. No jerkiness! Surely that must prove that there is something wrong with the gearbox in my Passat, but can I get VW to admit it? Not a chance!

I'm not the only one who airs a legitimate grouse on the Internet, so this review isn't posted by way of seeking to confound the others here. However. . . The old truism holds true: somehow, there's a need to air a greivance when one is seriously disappointed by a product, but no equivalent need when no disappointment at all is experienced.

As with the Passat and its Direct Shift gearbox.

And let's get the facts right here: it's a semi-automatic box using twin clutches. Not a conventional automatic. Which means I drive our Passat in full DSG auto mode around town, but when out on countryside runs or in ther hills etc, I use the box manually: push forward to change up, pull back to change down. It's instant, easy, and fuss free. And if you forget you're driving in, effectively, "manual" mode, the auto system doesn't: if, for example, you're trying to tootle along in 4th and it's wrong, the car automatically senses that and shifts into 3rd. (So when you come to a stop, there's no need to move the shift at all: it works its way back down from 6th to 1st without any manual input on your part.)

So. . . Does DSG actually work? Yes. Brilliantly. Auto changes are smooth: no hesitation, no jerking. And power delivery is constant -- which means that in full automatic mode, a Passat DSG accelerates faster than a Passat without DSG (wow, an automatic that leaves an identically powered manual car behind? But, yes. It's true.)

Our Passat was first registered in April, 2007. It's a 140PS DSG model in SE guise. However, it was factory fitted with the full options list, including the Sports pack. So it drives and handles exactly like a Sport (owered suspension, split-rim alloys etc.)

It also comes with full front / rear park assist and auto-hold, which is incredibly useful in stop-start traffic because you're not constantly having to keep your foot on the brake when you stop (instead, just stop, take your foot off the brake, and when you tap the accelerator to move off again, auto-hold automatically releases the brake. I regularly park in a multi-storey with a long, winding access ramp from the road and there's always a line of vehicles ahead, queuing to get in: all the drivers are riding the clutch or struggling with handbrake etc, whereas the Passat simply moves uphill with auto-hold taking care of the brake release as and when the car needs to move.)

We purchased the car as a private sale from a friend when the Passat was 12 months old. Two years and two months later, the Passat has taken us from our home in southern Scotland on separate long distance driving holidays to Barcelona, Calella and Perpignan; to Koblenz and the southern Rhine; to Amsterdam and the northern Netherlands; and to Bayeaux and the Normandy D-Day beaches. She has driven at high speeds in temperatures of 112F (southern France) and at considerably lower speeds at minus 10C (northern Netherlands.) And she has never failed once.

In the UK, she has travelled throughout England and Scotland, on both long runs as well as short. We're retired, so don't do any commuting, but we do regularly make city centre shopping trips so we're used to peak traffic conditions.

As to performance: the Passat DSG accelerates, as noted, quickly and smoothly. An almost constant surprise is the amount of torque available not merely at low speed but at high: kick-down at 70mph and she rockets away.

On long, Continental motorway runs, where she's averaging over 80mph, fuel consumption has never been less than 41 mpg. On UK motorways, consumption has averaged 43mpg. Several times a year, however, we drive through Lincolnshire, where you're lucky to average anything like 50mph overall. On those trips, the Passat has returned 54 mpg (not a mis-print: 54mpg) whilst on country runs with high speed A roads (unlike Lincolnshire) and slower B roads, fuel consumption has averaged 48mpg.

In summary: the Passat DSG we have has proved faultless (and VW main dealer servicing prices, surprisingly reasonable.) To judge by the comments of other Passat DSG owners on the UK's main owner forum -- AudiVW forum -- the level opf "horror stories" as compared to the volume on this thread is nothing remotely the same.

Which takes me back to my starting point. Complaints that are legitimate and genuine are representative of the complainant's experience. Just as songs of praise are legitimate and genuine, and representative of the singer's personal experience. Neither the complaint nor the praise should ever be regarded as a generality without first delving deeper into as many user experiences as possible before forming a judgment.

Considering the experience we've had of our Passat 140PS diesel DSG SE-cum-Sports saloon, we'd unhesitatingly recommend it to anyone else: definitely, 5 stars all round.

First the good things: great on space, reliable(not the DSG!), good mpg(average 42), comfortable, easy to live with, powerful engine.

But that gearbox is the worst auto box I know. It is jerky and simply a pain to use in town, stop and go, traffic. What was VW thinking of? It has been send back to Germany once for repairs but is only little better now than before.

So if you are thinking of buying a Passat diesel with DSG, don't!

Bought 5 Passats with DSG box over 6 months for company. Every one has had a major gearbox failure with the Mechatronic units failing in each case. Thats a coll £1000+ for the bits alone without the labour cost or the hassle of tasking the cars back continually. Garage tried to tell us they would settle down and stop jerking through the first and reverse gears. Absolutely awful. We have started to replace each one with Renault Espace. After 12 months not a single warranty problem on any of the Renaults.

Parking sensors when raining they go off continuously until i reach 15mph been back to garage several times, change all sensors but the problem is still there

I like the car but the parking sensor problem is a real pain. i am sure i am not the only one to have this problem

I have had several cars with automatic gears, sadly the DSG has/is the worse one I have had the misfortune to experience. In addition to the "jerking" problem, I now find that in sports mode the car will NOT change up to 6th gear! It's going back to the dealer again of course and if they ever cure the problem, I would be very happy with car. Sadly, I think they will have to refund my money, or exchange the vehicle, as after all this time I find it difficult to believe that a solution to my problem will be found.

Would I but another VW, don't make me laugh , I've got chapped lips....No No No!

My reliability rating is based on the Gearbox problem. It would be much higher had the DSG functioned properly.