Been driving my 2015 1.8 A3 for the past 11 months. I've used it for my daily commute in and out of NYC, and some occasional road trips (just crossed 14k miles). Was driving into the city yesterday when it felt a bit like the gears were slipping. About 10 minutes later, an error appeared:

Transmission Malfunction: no reverse gear (you can continue driving)

It seemed like the power dropped out, and I was suddenly in what felt like 2nd gear. I pulled over, turned the car off and back on again, and everything was fine. Continued for another mile (while calling my dealership) and it happened again. This time, I had to pull into someones driveway, and I had no reverse gear to back out. Turned off and on again, reverse came back but this time the check engine light was on steadily. As I made my way to the dealership, the car dropped into first gear, so I had to drive slow with my hazards on and limp it into the shop.

Just heard back, will need a total transmission replacement. Anyone have any experience with this? I'd expect some weird quirks with a first gen model, but this is pretty extreme.

 

I'd say - glad you got warranty. I wouldn't want to pay for this crap.

From the looks of it the A3 with the 1.8 engine comes only with the front wheel drive version. I know the past Audi's with a CVT had huge problems. Maybe they still haven't figured it out. Look up Audi and CVT failures... you will find a lot of them. Personally I'd never go for an Audi with an automatic without quattro!

I opted for the older Audi a3 with manual transmission and front wheel drive (since Audi decided not to sell the manual quattro version for the a3 )

 

Well this just happened to me. Was cruising along at 70 mph I felt a shift in the transmission a second later the RPM shot to 6300 and my speed dropped about 25 mph. Managed to get into a parking lot turn the car off and then back on warnings went away I had reverse but car would not go out of first gear. Dealership has the car they will look at it on Monday and give me the verdict. I'm thinking of trading do a 2015 A4 premium plus S line package. I'm curious if anyone has been able to parlay this into a lower price for a replacement vehicle. I just rolled over 11,460 miles.

 

Mines the 2.0T Quattro DSG tranny.

 

DSG's are great (performance, feeling, everything except reliability) but have also experienced some major failures within the first years of ownership. Warranty will cover them but if you get out of warranty it's a money pit.

 

Got a call from the dealership. After conferring with Audi engineers, they have decided to replace the entire transmission. Apparently I lost one side of the tranny which is why I still had reverse but couldn't get out of 1st gear. New tranny "VIN" coded for my Audi will be here on Friday so I will hopefully be back in my baby by next Saturday...

 

after 21 days, i finally have my baby back! Tranny came in during the first 3 days, 3 days later to install, then found out it had the wrong software loaded. Waited another 2 weeks for the software pack from Germany to get here and be installed. So far so good, took her to 100+ on the road yesterday with no issues.

 

Glad that everything was taken care of. Have fun with the new tranny .... I just hope you don't end up in similar situation after your warranty ends.

 

So far so good, Shift points are now higher at between 2400 and 3200 depending on heavy on the gas I am (before it was between 1800 and 2200).
Downshifts have gotten more abrupt though. Service manager keeps telling me this is the first time it happened and thats why they had to wait for engineer in Germany to write the code for it. MPG doesn't appear to be affected on the highway, will need to monitor over the next several work days and see what city mileage does.
On the plus side, my car now does the auto Park brake disengage by tapping on the gas pedal!
No worries there, plan on trading her in with 50 miles left of factory warranty. :-)

 

Have you had a strange engine noise? I just bought same car, I have almost 11k miles and I'm getting a bvvv bvvv noise at around 50 to 60 , the dealership mechanic drove it couldn't figure it out