DSG Experiences

[Jo Illingworth]

Just looking at a Passat Sport Estate, never had a 'auto' box before always been a manual man. DSG seems to be a option that I keep setting aside when trawling classifieds but talking to 'auto' drivers i'm not sure whether I should be?????

Experiences welcome guys, how do these things drive, responsive etc????

Also whats the yearly road tax on a Bluemotion?

Thanks

Jo Illingworth

[bertj]

IMO DSG boxes are brilliant. To be pedantic they are actually not automatic gearboxes but automated gearboxes. In other words they change gear for you and are entirely different from 'old fashioned', torque converter automatics. We have a 2011 Passat SE DSG and a 2011 Golf Match DSG (tdi diesels) and both are very smooth, so much so that you very rarely feel gear changes. Older DSG boxes sometimes had a slight hesitancy at roundabouts etc. but this seems to have been eliminated. There is no way you can change gears faster than a DSG box if you indulge in 'spirited' driving. A further plus is that fuel consumption is hardly affected; older auto boxes were notorious for wrecking fuel consumption. We get about 50mpg on both cars.
You really need to drive one to appreciate just how good they are.

[Teflon]

Don't buy one. Chances are, you'll never bother with a manual ever again.

We've three DSG's in the family, two on petrol engines with flappy paddles and one on my diesel Passat. I seldom need the paddles with petrol, but do very occasionally reach for them on the diesel, only to find them missing. A very slight easing of the loud pedal prompts an upchange anyway.

The only gearbox I've had which is better is Audi's multitronic. The DSG is almost as smooth as multitronic and is much better than an old fashioned slush box on a Merc, Ford, Honda, etc. Performance is very marginally better than a manual but you would have to be a lunatic to spot the difference. Economy supposedly varies from slightly better to slightly worse depending on model and engine but in practice I would bet on it being just shy of the results you could acheive in a manual across the board. A DSG won't allow you to hold a very high gear and labour the engine in the misguided search for better mpg or because the driver is just too idle to use the clutch.

One of our three has had problems. The Passat wasn't entirely smooth straight out of the factory but it took me until the first service at 2 years old to get it looked at. The result was a repalcement mechatronic control unit under warranty. It's been back again after getting stuck in gear but this was all sorted (hopefully) by software changes.

I'd still buy another DSG but now that other manufacturers have started to get their acts together and offer an equivalent my choice for next car is a bit wider than it was four years ago.

If buying new, you should be okay. If buying used, choose carefully because (the albeit rare) problems are very expensive to sort.

[-M-]

I agree with other posts that the DSG is technically brilliant and in everyday use very good. Obviously there are additional maintainence costs associated with the DSG as well as other repair times being higher due to the fact it is a big piece of kit which restricts other operations which on a manual you wouldn't have.

Outside of warranty DSG repairs if they occur are expensive - mechatronics for example plus later boxes iirc were not repairable and had to be exchanged instead.

Another consideration is for the money the acceleration is only under a second difference, the vehicle tax is generally more expensive for a DSG vehicle than its manual alternative, in some cases the mpg is better on a manual than a dsg version.