For a start, your vehicle at just over five years of age is only just out of its five-year warranty. So it would be worth contacting LDV Australia’s customer service department to see if there’s any help available for a fix, or to cover some of the costs of a fix.

Meanwhile, a lot of these plastic add-ons are attached via small plastic clips and it’s these that fail, allowing the part in question to fall off. In the old days, such a trim piece would probably have been made of metal and been secured by metal tabs or pins or even a nut and bolt. But there are some really good adhesives on the market now that would probably have the strength to effectively glue the trim piece back on. That will make getting it off again (if you ever have to) a bit messy and could damage the paint underneath, but it’s probably better than having to replace a strip of tape every few weeks.

There’s probably a very simple solution to this involving a wire that has been disconnected during the transmission replacement, and not reconnected afterwards. You might find it’s a wire to a sensor that has been bumped or disconnected, and without this, the engine doesn’t know it is below operating temperature and, therefore, doesn’t richen the air-fuel mixture to compensate.

This compensation is how modern, electronically controlled vehicles make do without an old fashioned choke lever. But if the wiring isn’t connected and the sensors all working, the car doesn’t have the information it needs to run properly under all circumstances.

If the car drives forward then it’s possibly not the age-old problem of low or dirty transmission fluid that’s causing the problem. Even so, it may not be a catastrophic failure of the transmission and could, in fact, be as simple as a poorly adjusted gear selector cable or linkage. The sensors that operate the rear camera and reversing lights are not necessarily the same ones that actually select each gear, so the fact that they operate does not mean the transmission is physically selecting Reverse gear.

Have the vehicle looked at by a transmission specialist who will possibly have seen this very problem before. Don’t forget, either, that if the car has travelled less than 130,000km and has been serviced correctly, you may still be covered by LDV’s factory warranty which was for five years back when the vehicle was sold new. But get it looked at and the problem logged with LDV before that warranty runs out.