Why does our new Volkswagen Touareg R Line gearbox keep shuttling between the higher gears?

We replaced our 2013 Volkswagen Touareg with a brand new 262PS R Line + auto six weeks ago. At 60 - 70mph the gearbox constantly shuttles between gears six, seven and eight. The only way to stop it is to use the manual Tiptronic facility to hold eighth gear. The Volkswagen dealer agreed it was really annoying on an initial test drive but after three days in workshop advised that the gearbox was performing to its specification. Our previous 2013 model (which also had an 8 speed auto) didn't do this. Any advice?

Asked on 3 March 2017 by Phillip McMaw

Answered by Honest John

They have probably raised the ratio of the seventh and eighth gears to get better cruising economy at 90mph which you can do in Germany but can't legally do in the UK. We have just driven a new G30 530d back from Southern Spain to Surrey and at higher speeds it was doing 52mph per 1000rpm in eighth. Yet on UK motorways where 70mph equates to around 1400rpm it would frequently drop a gear or two because it wasn't happy as such low constant revs.

Tags: automatic gearbox problems new cars owning consumer advice rpm

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