While starting the car, several diagnostic lights came on, including the ecp and check engine light. Entering the reverse gear made the car accelerate fast backwards when releasing the breaks but not using the gas pedal to accelerate. The surprise it came with could have led to back into cars or passengers standing behind. The car fell into a safety mode, forward accelerated very slowly to max 30 mph while heading to a shop.

- Longmont, CO, USA

Downshifting hard on its on oil leaking on top and bottom of engine

- Fort Walton Beach, FL, USA

Cruise control on my 2007 Volkswagen Rabbit will intermediately come on and off. According to blogs and Volkswagen Rabbits also notice this. At one point I saw myself only doing 40 mph when I had the cruise set on 70 mph.

- Romulus, MI, USA

I bought a used 2007 Volkswagen Rabbit with 22,500 km Jan. 10, 2009. I drove the vehicle fairly steadily in the city and on the freeway the week after the purchase. While on the freeway I did notice a substantial acceleration on one occasion when I passed although I did not accelerate very much, however I thought I might have engaged passing acceleration. Then a few days later on Jan. 17, 2009 a week later, I was in quite a frightening accident that resulted in considerable damage. Thankfully no one was injured. I had gone to a small shopping mall that had parking in front of the shops. I pulled into a stall in front of one of the shops and was gently accelerating to pull up to the stall curb when the car accelerated out of control into the shop damaging the building and the car. The whole thing happened so quickly, I couldn't even react to put on the brakes. Had people been walking in front of the car, they would have been killed. I am not an aggressive driver and I have not had an accident in 25 years. I was in a state of shock. Due to the seriousness of what happened, I thought you should know in the event others start to happen. Right now I am in the process of getting the vehicle repaired and try to determine what happened.

- Chilliwack, B.C., Canada, 00, USA

Rabbit issues: 4 months in. To give you an idea...with 300000 lms on the car I was stuck in inner city traffic just after I pulled out of my street where I lived. It was a warm day in January, and I had let the car warm up, but when I was in traffic it decided to stall. I had to wait a few seconds to get the motor to turn back over. The car had been shaking more then it would normally a few moments before. Then, the other day, I started the car, cleaned the snow off, and then drove off. Getting out of my street had to cross a really busy street to make the turn, when I went to hit the gas to get into a free spot on the road the car revved really high, but the car didn't respond. The car drove like I was only wanting it to go 10 mph, but I had hit the pedal to get it to go way faster given the busy street. The revvs were there like the car was in neutral or something, but it didn't respond. I immediately checked the automatic gear box to see if I had accidentally bumped the sifter into neutral, but I hadn't it. I almost got killed. Very strange. I whipped the sweat off of my forehead and kept driving slowly and it was okay. I even tried the gas pedal again to see if it would not respond, but it did almost like there was no fuel coming through, but that didn't make sense because the revvs were there. I will have it checked out next time I go to my dealer.

- Toronto, 00, USA