VW Stuck in Park

I see from my server logs; I am start­ing to get hits on peo­ple search­ing for help with the same VW stuck in park prob­lem I had. In hopes that this helps oth­ers out, I’m post­ing the steps I got from VW’s road­side assis­tance below. These instruc­tions worked on my 2002 VW Golf GLS with an auto­matic trans­mis­sion, but may or may not work on any other vehi­cle. And I make no claim that they are safe to use on any vehi­cle. So if you fol­low these instruc­tions, you do so at your own risk!

  1. Press down on the break pedal 5 times.
  2. On the 5 time, hold down the break pedal and start the car.
  3. Let the car run for 5 sec­onds, while still hold­ing down the break pedal, and then turn it off.
  4. Again while still hold­ing down the break pedal, give the key a one quar­ter turn in the ignition.
  5. Still hold­ing down the break pedal, move the gear shift so that it is between Neu­tral and Drive.
  6. Finally, with your foot hold­ing down the break pedal, start the car. Hope­fully, you can now shift your into what­ever gear you need and drive it to the near­est VW ser­vice cen­ter to get it fixed.
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About Mark McKibben

Mark is a data analyst for [REDACTED], currently residing in the Midwest. CoffeeBear is a place for him to spout off about whatever catches his fancy. In his spare time, Mark does a bit of webdev & design. To stalk him more effectively, try following him on Twitter.

6 Comments

  1. jr says:
    July 5th, 2006 at 3:39 am

    I’m going to tell my friend about that

  2. Mark says:
    July 5th, 2006 at 1:08 pm

    I hope it helps your friend out.

  3. cindy says:
    July 31st, 2006 at 8:31 am

    I had the same issue. I’m try­ing to fig­ure out how to install the part now. Stuck too

  4. Jen­nifer says:
    February 1st, 2007 at 5:35 pm

    I had this same prob­lem hap­pen to me over 2 years ago and this morn­ing. The above steps work because I called road­side assis­tance and they had me fol­low those steps again. I am tak­ing the car to get looked at.

  5. Shaun says:
    January 31st, 2009 at 5:11 pm

    This worked, sounds ridicu­lous but worked for me

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This work by Mark McKibben is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.