I recently purchased a 2003 2.0 Liter A4 (non turbo version) and have been getting a very strange problem with the Automatic Transmission.

The transmission randomly magically goes into manual (tiptronic) into gear 1 or 2 at low aggressive driving moments even though the gear is firmly placed in the automatic Drive mode. When this happens, I have to physically change into manual and bring it back to drive.

This happens very rarely but at least once in two days. Sometimes in the morning or sometimes even after driving the whole day or mid day - there doesn't seem to be any clear trigger.

If anyone has any info about this please let me know - do you suppose i'm heading towards an imminent transmission failure?

thanks - newbie