Volkswagen DQ500 / DQ381

Volkswagen's wet seven-speed DSGs — the heavy-duty DQ500 and the later DQ381 — in the Audi A3, the Golf R and the Jetta.

Wet is the distinction that matters and the group's own naming hides it. The DQ200 is a dry seven-speed with a very different reputation, and both are sold as "7-speed DSG" — so the low-speed judder written about at length applies to one of them and not to these. A shudder from rest on a DQ500 is a fault.

The DQ500 was built for torque — it is the gearbox behind the Golf R and the Audi RS3 — and its clutches are not the wear item the dry unit's are.

Its expensive failure is the mechatronic unit, presenting electrically: a gear refused, a limp mode, a solenoid code. Nothing slips first.

Fluid is the whole of the maintenance and the interval is real — a wet DSG shares its oil between the clutches and the hydraulics, so worn fluid makes it change badly long before it makes anything fail. VW specifies a change; the handbook's silence on some markets is not an exemption.