This epic pile of garbage I bought in 2021, a 2005 Volkswagen Passat TDI wagon with an automatic transmission.
So, the car was great for a little while, at least long enough that I never wrote an update for this site. Then, it started exhibiting issues getting into fifth gear. Now, mind you, the transmission on it was supposedly just a few years old, so it shouldn’t have been doing that.
Eventually, the transmission issue got so bad that it sometimes didn’t like getting into fourth gear as well. What would happen is the transmission would attempt to begin a shift to fourth or fifth, tons of vibration would occur, I’d feel and hear a hard metallic bang, then the car would enter transmission limp mode.
I parked the car for a year, deciding to put it on ice while the car could still move under its own power. The idea was that I’d buy a manual transmission and have my indy do the swap. Well, earlier this year, my indy said he doesn’t do swaps. So, I pulled it out of storage and decided to sell it. During the time I’ve had it for sale, something happened to the car’s vacuum system, now the brakes are super hard and the turbo doesn’t boost. My wife then accidentally lost the title. I could fix the vacuum problem (probably the pump or a line) and replace the title, but with a trash transmission it’s maybe worth $500-$1,000, anyway. I’ve now owned three of these diesel wagons with automatic transmissions and all of them had some sort of transmission problem.
Of course, I did not learn my lesson…I ended up buying another 2005 Passat TDI wagon (now my fourth), but with a manual already swapped into it!
