VOLKSWAGEN Passat Review

Regardless of what the speedometer has to say, your body will be a big fan of the Passat. Whether we’re taking about urban road cavities, A-roads imperfections or anything in between, this car makes sure that it is the one that feels the shocks, not you.

VW claims that it has used a special vibration-killing principle for the engine, but we can’t say that the car’s „shake, rattle and roll” was below the segment’s average. And while we’re here, we have to say that the 2.0-liter TDI unit isn’t the most refined in its class.

If you’re willing to use the Passat to get from A to B fast (this is all we can say about a journey with the pedal to the carpet in the B7), you’ll need to push it high in the rev band, with the noise invading the car in a way that makes us feel like we’re going back in time. Keep the revs low however, and you'll be able to use this saloon as a tea salon.

So, we’ve got the lower area-NVH covered, but what about the upper one? Our test vehicle was fitted with noise-damping windshield and front side windows, which really made a world of difference. Opening your window at highway speeds brings an explosion of noise inside the car’s cabin, but the aforementioned glass makes this seem like a nuclear blast, as you instantly go from almost total silence to the wind’s growl.

Our test vehicle was gifted with the “Relax Package”, which really served its purpose, including a multifunctional steering wheel, a cruise control system, albeit not adaptive and the Parkpilot which, even though doesn’t incorporate a rear-view camera (yes, we know, we’re hard to please, but this is available as an option), manages to make parking jobs a lot easier. In fact, if your driving skills already cover this area and you take a little time to learn the system, you can even look like a parking class hero.

The touch-screen RCD 510 entertainment system, which uses 8 speakers to make you feel the beat, can be considered the highlight of the dashboard. Forget about the dials, the Passat’s aging interior design needs a feature like these to be brought to the contemporary times.

We really wished we could drive the car in outer space, but a few laws of physics prohibited us to doing that, which meant that, like all the other people in the world, we had to use the seats. The Passat seemed to be determined to compensate for lacking the ability to orbit the Earth through a set of well-designed, good-looking seats. While these might feel just a tad too hard in the first moments of a ride, you actually discover that they offer the perfect package, except for the times when you want to throw the vehicle around on corners. But the seats will be the least of your worries if you want to pilot the B7, so there’s no need to think about that.

Before we move on, we’d like to tell you that the Highline equipment level of our test car brought a leather/Alacantra finish and a heating function for the already-comfortable seats, as well as an electric power tilt and lumbar support for the driver’s one. The rear seats are almost just as nice to you, especially if you use the generously-sized armrest. Another feature that we really enjoyed was the possibility to tweak the headrest’s longitudinal position.

The vehicle also assists you after you’ve exited it, as the boot can be opened using a button of the ignition key, a feature that really came in handy for when we wanted to see if our photographer could introduce all his equipment in the luggage compartment all by himself, in one single attempt and without dropping anything (you see? the Passat can provide a fun experience).

Before we end this chapter, we must also mention that the list of features installed to tighten our test vehicle's relationship with its occupants also includes a leather finish, used for the steering wheel and front armrest, a dual-zone automatic air-conditioning system, as well as front and rear cup holders.

The Passat has many ways to make you feel relaxed. First of all, there’s the ride - except for when you’re traveling over speed bumps, you never feel the battle that’s going on bellow you. Then, there are the seats and the sound proofing, which sit at the top of the vehicle’s class. Reporting live from the driver’s seat, we can tell you that the Autohold function, which eliminates the need to dance on the pedals when you’re aiming to set off from an incline, the light clutch and the precise gearshift allow you to keep your bpm down.

In the fight to resist the gas pump’s seduction game, the Passat proves to be a skilled warrior. In fact, the only badge shining brighter than VW’s BlueMotion is the BMW 318d EfficientDynamics, but that one comes with a much heftier price. So, how does the Passat B7 manage to outperform all the rivals in its price range in term of fuel efficiency?

The answer is somewhere halfway between simple and complex and lies in the details of the standard BlueMotion technology. Imagine we are looking at a detailed scheme of our test car. It all starts in the cylinders, where diesel is injected using a common-rail system. It's not a Pumpe Duse system anymore, but nothing all that special here. However, zooming out a bit, we see two elements that play a key role in allowing the aforementioned system to send the fuel back to the tank, rather than burn it.

First, there’s the stop-start system, which keeps a moment of silence for the burned oil every time you look into a traffic light’s red eye. Well, not exactly every time, as the system sometimes lets the engine run, in order to cover the electrical needs of the vehicle’s other systems. You can deactivate the stop-start feature by pressing a button situated on the right of the gear shifter. In addition to that, the Passat comes with a kinetic energy recuperation system that converts braking energy into electricity, which is stored into the car’s battery.

Let's take a few moments to remember what all the aforementioned developments actually mean, translated into wallet language. The Passat took us through the morning rush hour with a fuel toll of 8 liters per 100 km (29.4 US mpg) - the air-conditioning and the stereo are our witnesses. Keeping the speedometer at 130 km/h (80 mph) in sixth gear on the highway made the value drop to 5.7 liters per 100 km (41 US mpg).

It is now time to zoom on another important asset of the Passat, its connection to the road, which manages to make the car an ultra-comfortable decent handler. This is not some sort of magic, it’s pure engineering. And it’s not rocket science either: the VW engineers went for the classic unsprung weight reduction formula. The front axle uses a MacPherson setup with lower A-arms and struts. Extensive use of aluminum means that the front running gear tips the scales at 13.3 kilograms (29.3 lbs) lower that a conventional one.

The B7’s rear talks to the road via a special four-link setup. Isolation is the word here: applied to a human this could have disastrous consequences, but when used for a vehicle, it can make wonders. Let us explain. The rear suspension separates longitudinal and transverse movements thanks to a special link design, while the subframe itself is separated from the body of the vehicle by four rubber-metal (we kept thinking about „heavy metal” after writing this) bearings. Volkswagen also offers an adaptive suspension, but our test vehicle was a complete stranger to it. As for the handling part of the deal, VW made the Passat a safe, 1:1 scale representation of the driver's intentions, with the only area that disappoints being the "go-fast" one.

Girls just want to have fun… and so do boys, men, women, grandparents, children, and even dogs. The Passat we tested proved to be a decent tool for satisfying this need for smart man-machine interaction.

Our attention was literally centered around the touch-screen multimedia system. If you’re a customer, you’ll have to go to the optional goodies lit, where you’ll find this as the RCD510. The Passat’s center console can accommodate four types of entertainment systems, with this being the second best. Actually, as the 6 ½ inches (16.5 cm) is also used as a graphic representation for the Park Assist system, we'll use the term “infotainment” to describe it.

Let’s start with its mood generating part, the music. It is ready to swallow all your play-lists, as it comes with an auxiliary-in socket, which is placed inside the front center armrest’s storage space, as well as with an SD card slot. Once we got the right tunes, we could really enjoy them, as the eight speakers seemed determined to encrypt the decibels in our DNA. It even became friends with our phones, as it is fitted with a Bluetooth connection.

The Passat’s need to socialize went even further: it showed its intention to meet new gadgets, as it came with two additional 12V outlets, one in the back and one in the luggage compartment.

The lazybones hidden (not so well) inside us enjoyed the automatic lighting control, as well as the automatic wipers with a rain sensor (not a single drop of rain fell during our test, but we liked the idea).

Other items which we're used to be taken for granted in the European D segment nowadays include the dual-zone climate control system, all-round electric-powered windows and the (non-adaptive) cruise control system.

VW didn’t rest on the Passat B6’s safety laurels (read an EuroNCAP rating of five stars), asking engineers to go back to the drawing board. Thus, the B7 comes with a more rigid structure and uses an extra topping of active safety systems.

We’ll take a look at the Passat, as if it would be standing on the showroom floor, with all the boxes of the optional extra safety features ticked. Like we said, the Passat magnifies your driving skills, as it comes packed with active safety features.

There’s an Active Cruise Control system that can dance to the beat played by the vehicle ahead, Front Assist, which brings the car to a halt when the driver fails to react in an emergency situation, Side Assist, which takes care of 100 meters of blind spot behind the vehicle, Lane Assist, a system that goes as far as counter-steering your vehicle back into its lane (nope, we couldn’t test if for “drifting”, as our test car wasn’t fitted with it), Fatigue Detection, which, if we were to judge by Mercedes’ commercials (Merc offers a similar system called Attention Assist), allows you to start a conversation with a young, attractive woman using business attire (don’t worry, we’ll make a proper description bellow). Our test car was also fitted with cornering fog lights, a relatively useful feature for open road driving.

Although the example we tested had graduated the Highline range-topping university, it had skipped most of the optional classes enumerated above, so we only go to review the Attention Assist. Yes, it does manage to notice when your inputs as a driver hit an incredibly low level, warning you that you have to take a break. As for the pretty girl, we had to pick her up all on our own. Since we’re here, we’ll also mention the rain sensor (a safety feature for lazy drivers and a comfort one for others) and the tire pressure monitoring system and the auto hold function, which does a pretty good job at replacing the sequence of driver feet movements.

As for the passive safety, the Passat we tested (we’ll only mention the ones that captured our attention) came with the airbag cocoon we’re used to: frontal, side and curtain airbags, collapsible pedals (optional lateral ones for the rear passenger we're missing) and headrests that also allows you to set their vertical position (We actually found out that these also fit pretty well in the “comfort” chapter).

VW didn’t reinvent the wheel, but it made it a lot safer. In other words, even though the Passat B7 doesn’t bring anything new to the market, it offers one of the best safety cocktails in its segment.

The Passat B7 should really use the “bold”, “italic” and “highlight” buttons when writing fuel efficiency on its business card. Even when we abused the pedal on the right, the 140 horses of the 2.0-liter TDI engine refused to burst out the gate of the fuel tank. Driving the car brought back memories from our childhood: we relived the Christmas morning feeling, as we found more than just one present.

The fuel consumption was not the only pleasant surprise - we found a second one, not under the Christmas three, but under the car. Here, we discovered a reworked suspension that really knows its way around potholes, bumps and irregularities. If we had to describe this car in one word, we'd add another one, in order to make it justice: refinement and frugality.

In the Passat, the driver is actually a passenger who can ask the vehicle what to do. The vehicle will follow your lead, but you’ll never be able to gracefully dance on anything that goes past “moderato”. VW considers that the typical Passat customer is not interested in driver involvement, but it would be nice if the Germans placed one or two dynamic aces up the vehicle’s sleeve.

Over the years, the aftermarket scene has had certain attempts, albeit rather shy, of showing VW that the Passat needs to develop some driving emotions. The development puzzle which would lead to that seems to have already been solved (remember the Nurburgring tests of the B7? - this is just one example), with only one (crucial) piece missing: the company’s willingness to let the engineers work their “allow the driver to be a part of the driving" magic on the Passat. Who knows? maybe the WRC will bring a change of winds for VW (we actually don't think so, but we don't want to ruin our own dream).

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what happens if one becomes too familiar with what would otherwise be a pretty sight? We can’t say that the Passat’s interior is ugly, but, if you ignore the touch-screen display, which isn’t a standard feature, it does show its age. Fortunately, this “old age instead of maturity” feeling, which is rather strong at the first contact with the car, pales into significance compared to the top class comfort, ergonomics and driving position.