Suzanne Calling

My car is dead. And dead in the it needs $5,000 in repairs that I don't have, won't have, and have no way of getting, either. The worst part? VW had been told pretty much since day one that my car slammed from first to second gear. This apparently indicated a fatal flaw in the VW Tiptronic transmission. For many years, I'd complain, I'd leave my car overnight so that they could test drive my car and get the whiplash inducing snap of the neck when the car revved to 3000 rpms, then decided "oh wait, you wanted to go into SECOND gear", then slammed back down to about 1500 rpms. Every single time, I'd get the car back and get the message that they were unable to duplicate problem. Three different dealers, 90-something thousand miles. Until that first visit for a service call, the one where I said 'replace my transmission fluid, it's slamming from first to second gear,' and they came back and told me there was a problem with my transmi...

The good news: My repair will be about $400 bucks. The bad news: My transmission is most definitely in need of replacement, but my mechanic told me to get medieval on VWoA's butt, because I have complained since the car was still in the break-in period that this was a problem. The slam into 2nd is a known defect. Seems my comment to the salesperson when I sat in the dealer's lot was accurate. I was lamenting the fact that I loved the color, but the car was automatic and said "It should be illegal for VW's to be automatic." Apparently, VW does a crappy job on them. The manual transmissions are probably the best the mechanic sees, very few problems, but without fail, if it's a VW with an automatic, he will be doing transmission work on it. The interesting part: the average mileage for this repair is 60k. Mine just turned 130k, so I got more than double (well, about double, honestly) when this became a big problem. I'm already fired up from other fronts,...