Hi, I've had my journey for a year now and mine coughs and splutters aswell.it only happens once in a while but it realy gets on my nerves.been back to dealer a few times but no joy, because it's intermittent it's never done it when I've left it at the dealers.guess I've just got to put up with it. Infact I'm pretty much disappointed in the whole engine. It's very noisey,rugh, unresponsive at low revs and stiff cluth. The clutch is very graty and you can feel the vibration when letting the pedal out, this is a common problem on a lot of vw models and vw don't seem to have done much about it.I'm still quite pleased with the car,even with it's problems.I think next time I might go back to a Honda,even if they do look boring.