Category: Large Family 
Price Range: £15,150 to £32,780
Good looking, feels like a high-quality item, strong image and good diesels.
Not the world's best petrol engines and manual gearbox a bit floppy, newer rivals better to drive, replaced in 2005.
Reasonable car but not as good as latest rivals. High feeling of quality and image means that it'll always find fans though. Petrol V6 and W8 models mostly pointless.
The biggest drawback with all cars in this class is depreciation, but the Passat fares better than quite a few of its mainstream rivals because it feels that bit classier. A manual diesel estate is the way to go to minimise losses on that score.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Volkswagen Passat
wrote on 06 06 2006