I've only driven Volkswagens my entire life and I have never had so many expensive issues with a car. Volkswagen is a great brand and you pay more money for the quality and dependability but with the Routan it has been a mess from the beginning. We owned our Routan less than a year when the transmission went out. The check engine light will not go off and since it wont go off my remote start wont work. The engine thermostat is bad , the CO2 sensors are all showing they are bad, something kept draining our battery and it took us $200 to find wires that were crossed, the starter started hard starting so we replaced the fuel injector for a whopping $600 and that still didnt fix the problem so our mechanic looked up what might fix it and has found that Routans computers falsely relay to the starter that there is an issue. So now we are waiting for a part that bypasses the computer to let the car start normally. The other day when I was driving it just shut off and I had to drift out of an intersection to the side of the road and restart it. I feel like I am holding my breath wondering what will happen next. I have loved Volkswagens but this has me seriously considering whether I will ever buy one again. I'm deeply disappointed that they came out with such a crappy car.

The check engine light started to come on a few hundred miles after the 62,000 miles mark and went away on its own initially. Then it came back so I had AutoZone check it out and their scan tool indicated that it was the Torque Converter Clutch Solenoid. They reset the light twice but it still came back on. The car still drove seemingly normal so I let it go until I started to notice performance issues on highway speeds and was getting bad mpg per fill up. I called the dealership about the issue but since it was out of warranty by 2k miles, they weren't going to cover it. They were going to charge me a $180 diagnostic fee on top of cost for repairs (total about $4,000 if completed by VW). I took it to Aamco instead who told me the same thing, that it was the TCC solenoid and the transmission had to be either replaced or rebuilt. I went with replaced with a re-manufactured one which cost me $3,280. It has been running good since then. This is outrageous that the transmission starts to die almost immediately after the warranty expired. I reported the issue to several other agencies as well but nothing happened so far.