Category: Large Family 
Price Range: £15,150 to £31,825
Much better to drive than previous model, build quality, enormous boot.
Styling on the dull end of scale, rear seat legroom not brilliant.
With hugely improved dynamics and excellent perceived quality, the Passat takes the fight to Mercedes and BMW.
The headline news first - this is a considerably better car to drive than the one it replaces. That's partly down to the body's greatly improved rigidity - the stiffer a bodyshell is, the better the suspension can control wheel movements and handling behaviour.
There are MacPherson struts up front with a four-link suspension at the rear, with anti-roll bars fore and aft, so it's a pretty conventional setup. The handling, though, has been transformed from vague and occasionally 'floaty' to sharp and precise - you can pedal this Passat with a great deal more vigour than the previous car, and the fun-to-drive factor has been markedly improved. The electro-mechanical, power-assisted steering has a real sporting feel to it, with meaty weight and first-rate feedback, too.
The ride quality is good, although the car can feel a bit nervous over ridges and small-frequency bumps.
As is so often the case these days, the diesel-powered variant is the best all-round performer in the range. The 140bhp Euro IV-compliant 2.0-litre turbodiesel is an ideal match for the Passat. Maximum torque of 236lb ft is developed between 1750 and 2500rpm, which means far fewer gearshifts are needed to maintain cruising speeds.
The best gearbox to go for is the brilliant DSG (Direct Shift Gearbox), with its dual-clutch setup. Basically, the DSG can be driven as a conventional automatic, or as a manual sequential-shift 'box with gearchanges effected through a nudge of the gearshift. We've driven this with petrol engines, but the DSG seems an even better match for potent diesels, handling the torque between shifts in a beautifully seamless fashion. For the record, the 2.0-litre TDi gets to 62mph in 9.8secs and a top speed of 128mph. If anything, it feels quicker. And while the 1.9-litre TDi does feel considerably slower, it doesn't come over all breathless.
Once again, it's all of that low-rev torque that makes the 1.9 TDi feel so much more responsive than the entry-level 115bhp 1.6-litre direct injection petrol engine, even if the petrol engine claims a quicker 0-62mph sprint. The 150bhp 2.0-litre petrol engine, another direct-injection unit, offers less outright performance than the 140bhp TDi unit, let alone the strong 170bhp 2.0 TDI, but does offer petrolheads a free-revving alternative to the diesel's relatively low-rev 'wall'.
The flagship performance model is the 250bhp 3.2 V6 petrol unit, however, which has the FSI direct-injection technology, and comes with the DSG 'box and VW's 4Motion four-wheel drive system. It's smooth and quiet - and very, very quick for a heavy family car in this class, doing 0-60mph in just 6.9 seconds. Whilst it doesn't quite have the handling finesse of, say, a 5-Series, it's a superb motorway cruiser, having more of an emphasis on comfort. A great car to be driven in, if not an enthusiast's drive.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Volkswagen Passat
wrote on 06 06 2006