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 Passat isn't a new car, and that tells when it comes to its dynamics. Although it's fairly quiet and the ride is composed, it isn't particularly accomplished. The steering's a bit woolly and it isn't an agile car. And although the diesel engines are responsive and powerful, the petrol units aren't that quiet, while the gearchange could be more positive, too.
The petrol models are, by and large, nothing to write home about. The range starts with a 2.0-litre, which breaks the 10-second 0-62mph barrier, while putting-out 199g/km of CO2 and returning 35mpg. The 1.8 T is more powerful and betters all those figures bar fuel consumption, although it's still close, at 34mpg. The 2.8 V6 and 4.0-litre V8 are nice engines, but largely pointless, unless obtaining maximum depreciation is your goal.
The diesels are a better bet. The 1.9-litre versions have 100 or 130bhp, while the 2.5 V6 has 163. All have plenty of low-end torque and return good mpg: near 50 for the 1.9-litre cars, 40 for the V6.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Volkswagen Passat
wrote on 06 06 2006