With all the talk about how unreliable the CVT is, I've often wondered if people who have them wouldn't be better off replacing the trans with a manual (or an auto out of a B5?). I've heard of people swapping out manuals for autos (and vice versa) in other types of cars before, so it should be possible, at least, if neither cheap nor easy.

 

Would be very difficult seeing as how pretty much everything is computer controlled on these.

 

Yeah, I suppose you'd have a lot of troubleshooting and reprogramming to do in order to get the computer to stop throwing funky trouble codes in that scenario. It'd probably be constantly telling you the trans was broken or something.