Mrs P's Mini Cooper is no longer suitable since moving house, as we have the need to transport several teenagers and large stuff on a regular basis.

A Passat TDi estate seems to be gaining popularity as a replacement - very likely an auto'. I seem to recall some horror stories about the DSG 'box's reliability - does anyone have any experience of the VW TDi and DSG combination to allay my fears?

 

I had one as a hire car a couple of years ago.

The DSG gearbox was great on the move but crap trying to move off on a slope. There was no way to prevent the car from rolling backwards as it also had a ridiculous electric handbrake.

However, other people found them fine so i might have just had a bad one.

 

Interesting - looking at the specifications, there seems to a 'Hold' device fitted to the DSG equipped cars (I guess similar to the Hill Assist on the Mini) which stops the car rolling backwards...

 

A DSG-equipped car was causing amusement at the Herts meet; they cannot handle maneouvering on a gravel car park!

neighbour did embarrassing wheelspin when it shifted from 2-1 just as he accelerated round cyclist.

Think they're OK once they've got going.

Just beware the cost of fluid replacement...

 

Years ago we had a manual TDi Passat estate to tow my racecar.

Horribly unreliable but nicely damped grab handles.

 

Shhh! Only Yanks are allowed to bitch about the reliability! It's heresy, or Hear'say or something.

 

 

Thanks for the heads-up on reliability... I'll take a look at an Avensis estate!

 

Got a lot of Passats on our fleet list and not really had much of a problem aside from the odd Turbo but then I've had that with BMW's as well.

Have got a TDI at the moment with a bad gear box - keeps jumping out of third and just doesn't seem to want to be fixed!

 

My only concern about the Avensis might be that they're so dull to drive, you'd be longing for it to break down to cure the monotony!

I'm not saying the Pissant will drive like an S2000, but probably try both. Or an Accord, which has (most of) the Honda reliability, and might be slightly less uninteresting than the Avensis.