Volkswagen DQ200 (0AM)

The seven-speed dry-clutch DSG, built for smaller engines where the wet DQ250's pumping losses cost fuel that the whole exercise was meant to save. It reached more than thirty models across Volkswagen, Audi, SEAT and Škoda.

It shares a badge with the DQ250 and almost nothing else, which is the single most useful thing to know about it. The clutches run dry, so there is no fluid carrying heat away from them, and the gearbox oil and the mechatronic fluid are separate systems rather than one. A reader told "it's a DSG, they're all the same" is being told something that is wrong in the way that costs money.

Dry clutches punish exactly the driving most owners do. Stop-start traffic and repeated hill starts are held on a slipping clutch that has nowhere to put the heat, and the wear that follows is uneven rather than gradual — a car that has spent its life in a city can be far worse than one with twice the motorway mileage. It shows as juddering from rest and hesitation in the lowest two ratios.

The mechatronic unit's electric oil pump is the notorious part, and it fails early and often enough to have driven an extended warranty programme. It maintains the hydraulic pressure that actually moves the clutches; when it goes, pressure goes with it, and the failure mode is abrupt — no drive, or limp mode, from a car that was fine the previous morning. Over-pressure inside the unit is the other direction and is worse, pushing fluid past seals into places it should never reach.

One mechanical fault is worth naming because it is specific and often misread as clutch wear: the reverse and sixth shift fork and its bearings, which produce a noise and a refusal to engage that has nothing to do with the clutches anyone is about to replace.