Two problems related to vehicle shudder have been reported for the 2008 Volkswagen GTI. The most recently reported issues are listed below.
Aug 11th I turned a corner in my 2008 vw Gti with ~29,8xx miles on the odometer, accelerated briskly in 2nd gear at approx 4000 rpm the car bucked and shuddered and lost power. When the rpm's dropped about 500rpm the motor regained power until about 4000 rpm and then the car bucked, shuddered and lost power again. This continued to happen as long as the accelerator peddle was depressed. This happened in every gear. Luckily this happened on a long freeway entrance ramp prior to my attempt to merge with freeway traffic. I took it to the dealer and the ecu had a low fuel pressure code. This apparently is a known issue and they replaced the cam, high pressure fuel pump and cam follower. Apparently the high pressure fuel pump is driven off the cam and over time punches a hole in the cam follower and then rides directly on the cam shaft causing scoring and resulting in the failure I experienced. I specifically asked to see the old parts as I wanted to ascertain the amount of metal shavings that were now floating around in my engine. For whatever reason they did not save the parts and sent them back to vw since this repair was under warranty.
My 08 Gti has very strange actions when I am driving my automatic dsg transmission. It will either lurch forward or slam into gears. At times it feel like it stalls as the car shakes violently. I know people that have changed their mechatroni units and found it's just a cpu problem but when I take this to the dealer there is issues with them stating they can't duplicate the problem. My car has caused me to get into an accident in which somebody rear ended me because my car slammed into 1st gear as I braked. This scares me very much when the vehicles gear doesn't seem to always be in the proper gear.