2008 Volkswagen GTI: harsh or hard shifting

7 of the 67 complaints about the 2008 Volkswagen GTI describe harsh or hard shifting.

owner complaints: 7
of this car's complaints: 10%
typical mileage: 15,000
recalls: 0

Is there a fix? 9 service bulletins cover this area of the car. See below

Harsh or hard shifting by model year

2017
1
2011
2
2010
2
2009
3
2008
7
2007
3

What owners say

Filed Aug 17, 2010 · Tires, Transmission · 11,000 miles · IN

Harsh shifting during acceleration in 2008 volkswagen gti with dsg transmission.

Filed Oct 30, 2009 · Transmission · 12,000 miles · CA

Normal acceleration from a stop or rolling, the dsg transmission will hesitate and produce a very rough shift to the next gear. This is intermittent but almost daily. Car is now in the vw dealers repair shop.

Filed Jul 27, 2009 · Transmission · 6,000 miles · VA

The car has jerking during low speed driving and has hard shifts sometimes. When backing up the car bucks or when taking off slowly or in traffic the car is extremely jerky.

Filed Jul 24, 2009 · Transmission · 20,000 miles · NJ

My dsg worked when I first got the car. I now have 20k miles on the car and my dsg is clunky, unsmooth, and sometimes the reverse gear does not even work, it just goes into neutral and stays there until I go back into park and switch back to reverse. I think that the dsg is a great transmission, don't get me wrong, but I feel that too many of them are failing too quickly. If vwoa were to fix these bugs then it would be an amazing transmission. I am having so many problems with my transmission that im thinking that I should have just got the manual. Vwoa needs to fix these bugs before something bad happens, to me, or other fellow vw owners.

Filed Jul 23, 2009 · Transmission · 20,000 miles · CA

Surging during parking maneuvers harsh shifting from the stop light.

Filed Jul 14, 2009 · Transmission · 15,000 miles · CA · crash

My 08 gti has very strange actions when I am driving my automatic dsg transmission. It will either lurch forward or slam into gears. At times it feel like it stalls as the car shakes violently. I know people that have changed their mechatroni units and found it's just a cpu problem but when I take this to the dealer there is issues with them stating they can't duplicate the problem. My car has caused me to get into an accident in which somebody rear ended me because my car slammed into 1st gear as I braked. This scares me very much when the vehicles gear doesn't seem to always be in the proper gear.

Filed Jul 13, 2009 · Transmission · 20,000 miles · IN

Car shifts very roughly 100 percent of the time. When I accelerate from a dead stop the car hesitates and then jerks into gear. Sometimes it slams into gear very harshly with even the lightest pressure on the pedal. This has taken me by surprise on several occasions almost causing me to rearend the person in front of me. It also downshifts very strangely...sometimes searching for gears.