It is about this time that someone out there is saying “how can you be so irresponsible to keep driving such a dangerous vehicle?”

We still have to get from A to B. Every time we drive the Yeti we are expecting something to go wrong. There have been so many near misses that the time when something inevitably “goes crunch” is nearing.

While this is of concern to us we take a small degree of comfort in the knowledge that Skoda / VW Australia and Wippells Auto’s Toowoomba have effectively absolved us of any liability for the time when things turn pear shaped.

In the full knowledge of how the Yeti is behaving and the hazards it routinely presents they have stated that it is operating as designed and that there is nothing wrong with the vehicle. Thus they have assumed full responsibility for its operation.

Just because we believe that it is hazardous to drive, and it regularly exhibits behaviour that puts us and other road users in danger, doesn’t mean that it is dangerous. The manufacturer have stated that they have designed it, and other DSG equipped vehicles to operate this way. They are comfortable with this and so is the retailer, Wippells Auto’s Toowoomba.

We have done what we can to have the vehicle repaired and then replaced without success. We have affixed the first of several warning decals to alert other road users to the potential hazard in their vicinity. We have started this website and associated social media pages to attempt to spread the word to other people who own / use / interact with DSG equipped vehicles.

I find it disturbing that after fixing the problems with the early DSG transmission losing drive, VW have now deliberately engineered an operation into them that results in them losing drive without warning or annunciation – and they believe that it is acceptable to place the increased life of a mechanical component above vehicle safety.