The new VW Passat is Volkswagen as we know and love it | GRR
The Volkswagen Passat is one of those difficult cars, that for all its entrenchment in its creator’s recent history, is slipping down the sales charts. Still Volkswagen has seen fit to present a ninth-generation car that it hopes will continue a 50-year, 30 million-unit legacy and give traditional buyers a stepping stone into Volkswagen’s inevitable future.
For yes, this is a Passat as we very much know and love it. It’s conservatively yet handsomely styled; a finely tuned concoction of sporty, safe, contemporary and futuristic, with a few nods to the ID line of cars with width-spanning lighting front and rear and those jellybean headlamps, while still being nothing more or less than what you’d expect. Following reactions to the latest Golf and given this is historically, VW’s second best-seller behind the Golf, that’s no bad thing. That is quite a big mouth, mind.
The interior pushes things on a little more, very clearly borrowing from the VW ID.7 while being a bit less ‘tomorrow’s world’. So yes, there is a substantial 15-inch infotainment screen (powered by the latest MIB4-powered infotainment) and a 12.9-inch driver’s screen, augmented by a new windscreen head-up display. There might be embedded mood lighting in the passenger dash trim.
But look at the wheel. Praise be, an array of buttons that very clearly go up and down with what looks like nothing in the way of haptic touch sensitivity. Good lord, it’s a car! And one that looks nicely made in that Piech-esque reassuring mid-2000s Volkswagen kind of way. The ten-chamber pressure point massage seats do sound very Phaeton, even if they’re borrowed from the latest Touareg.
What certainly does carry over from the IDs, is the movement of the ‘shifter’. Gone is the faux-manual knob sat in the middle. We’re back to column shifting, which means the centre console can now hold a fairly big storage bin. It’s a practical estate, remember.
Indeed, the new Passat is said to be more practical in almost every way, with 40 litres more load space (up 140 litres with the seats folded), while legroom has been boosted by 50mm. That latter figure comes from a commensurate increase in wheelbase on this MQB Eco-based car. Overall the Passat Variant is 144mm longer than the car it replaces and 20mm wider, while staying the same height.
In terms of powertrains, the new Passat is intended to be highly versatile? Still want diesel? Three TDIs ranging from 122PS (90kW), through 150PS (110kW) and 193PS (142kW) are available. Want petrol-only? Two TSIs should do it, while an augmented mild hybrid eTSI adds a third option, with 204PS (150kW), 265PS (195kW) and 150PS (110kW) respectively.
Want a full-on plug-in hybrid? Two eHybrids are available, sporting 204PS (150kW) and 272PS (200kW) respectively thanks to the 1.5 TSI working in tandem with an electric motor and a 19.7kWh battery. The eHybrids can offer electric-only driving of up to 62 miles. Very useful indeed, especially when paired with the petrol engine for a 620-mile total driving range.
The most powerful petrol- and diesel-only cars come as standard with 4Motion four-wheel-drive and unsurprisingly, the manual is dead across the board, with DSGs (six-speed in the eHybrid) doing the business.
There are a few specifications to choose from. The basic Passat is well-equipped off the bat, with the new display, smartphone integration, USB C ports and adaptive cruise control. It gets parking cameras, LED headlights and those LED tail clusters as standard.
Business spec adds chrome trim on the outside, silver roof rails, the massage seats, extra USB C ports and three-zone climate control. It also gets auto lights, park assist and Travel Assist, which allows partially autonomous driving.
Elegance and R-Line are of course the most well-equipped, hotly-styled versions, with 17-inch wheels on the former and 18-inchers on the latter. They both get IQ matrix LED headlights and heated seats with a more variable massage function.
So what do you think of the new Volkswagen Passat? As above, it’s exactly the kind of comforting, typical Volkswagen I think we’ve all craved for a little while, probably since the Mk7 Golf went out of production. It’s sensible yet stylish, sturdy yet unpretentious, well-equipped and with a variety of powertrains, offering something for almost everyone. In a world where the Volvo estate is basically dead, this has a good chance of picking up the slack (and the sales).