But apparently this has been validated by the NHTSA. All the other cases weren't.

Not such a great start for the Tiguan in the U.S...

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No. Engine surge ALREADY!?!??

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Tell me about it, Torrent...

My 2000 Passat just beat them...to the surging "punch".

My B5 does the same thing for some time now when the A/C is on (say at idle or at an intersection, etc.). But not too bad or more than an annoyance....

However, them experts at VW sites like VWVortex attribute this to the "dirty MAF" (no, not that dirty "MF"...it's the "Mass Airflow" meter) and not the ECM. :-I

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hey, tell me tha last time VW launched any vehicle without having multiple recals in the first few months.

so yes, here goes again, and maybe this will also catch on fire while parked like the GTI

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Thats only in Germany.

I saw a blue SEL on campus today. And the VW dealer has two of them on the lot, so I guess a few people have them.

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I saw a VW dealer in Dallas about a week ago that appeared to have around a dozen on the lot.

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They'd have more credit than most... considering that the car would actually accelerate when the driver did not intend for it to do so.

And if VW confirms it's a problem with the ECU. It can't be driver error due to the gas and brake being too close, can it?

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Still the driver's fault if they get into an accident. I've had a similar experience with one of my old Mercedes. Numerous models over the years (though the one in question was an '86 560SEL) have had what Mercedes calls overload or overvoltage protection relays. One of the failure modes for these relays causes intermittent, random surging at idle (eventually leading to a permanently elevated idle, until the relay is replaced). This surging can be pretty severe-up to 1500 or 2000rpms from a stock idle speed of about 600.

Never once did I have a situation where the car accelerated without me knowing about it or being in control of it. Ever. Despite the surging.

The only way something like this could lead to an accident is if the person behind the wheel wasn't paying due care and attention to operating their vehicle (e.g. they had their foot off the brake at a stoplight, they panicked when it surged and put the car in drive instead of reverse and bumped their garage wall, etc.), or is very old or EXTREMELY petite and thus doesn't have sufficient strength to say, uh, hold the car on the brakes long enough to stick it in neutral and shut it off.

Do I think this is an acceptable failure, particularly on virtually brand new vehicles? No; and, in fact, I find it somewhat amusing because I do hate VWs.

That being said, any loss of control, in any car, that cannot be ascribed to a failure of the tires, the suspension, the steering, or the braking system to operate as designed is ALWAYS the driver's fault. Always. They either got themselves into a situation they couldn't handle (such as overcooking it into a corner in an older 911), or they're incapable-be it due to a lack of physical strength, a lack of mental acuity, a panic response that amounts to curling into a ball and examining their navel for accumulated lint, being clueless as to how to actually drive and control a motor vehicle, having a reaction time best measured with a sundial, or whatever-of dealing with an unanticipated situation, such as an engine revving unexpectedly, in an appropriate fashion. As far as I'm concerned, based on what I've read here of the problem, anyone that has an accident due to this failure should be restricted to bicycles, and ones with training wheels at that.

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Um... a long litany about an electrical gremlin in an old German car doesn't make me recognize some heightened level of driver responsibility.

It confirms my suspicions think that German cars have over complex electrical crap that causes really annoying/scary things like engine surges.

It would be lovely if people paid enough attention to their cars to be able to handle sudden unpredictable things like engine surges caused by faulty ECU programming or failing overvoltage relays... but at the same time it's preferable that engines don't surge at all.

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The Audi 5000/VW Quantum had a legit recall for idle stabilizer problems.

http://www.motorbeat.com/recall/5797/

This particular recall must send shivers up VAG's spine.

I do agree that if you are paying any kind of attention and press the brake (instead of the gas!) you will bring the car to a halt and not suffer "sudden acceleration syndrome".

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This guy epilonious probably doesn't even have a car. All he does is bash Volkswagen all day long on Autoblog.

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I thought Engine sludge in the 1.8 T's was notorious in that series of Passat's. It was a large focus of that "VW Heal Thyself" article that brought so much Ire a while back.

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unsurprising. this is vw, after all. still, it's disappointing. the sort of thing that can make owners feel bitten in the ass.

"umm, How about the 1998 Passat? Most reliable first year model if I remember correctly."

dude, that was 10 years ago. and how was reliability the second, third, and subsequent years?

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That was a great article.

The part about the mechanic opening the engine and realizing it had 3x as many moving parts as it needed is the part that hits home the most. This seems to be true of nearly any system on a German car. It's more complex than it needs to be and thus is more likely to fail and costs more to fix (let alone produce in the first place) than it needs to.

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