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Volkswagen Passat
Wonderful car, but does it compete with Mercedes-Benz and Audi? Perhaps.
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As part of a trip to Wolfsburg, Germany, last summer to see Volkswagen's new
line of passenger cars, I, along with seventeen of my hardest-drinking
journalist fellows, was invited to an audience with Ferdinand Piech, the head of
the Volkswagen Group. Piech sat facing us and explained the new philosophy of
the company. Using far too many combat analogies for a man who looks that much
like a German tank commander, he said that Volkswagen would go up against
Mercedes-Benz in the American marketplace. The assembled journos were
alternately bemused or entertained by that remark, but I was so stunned I almost
choked on my Weisswurst. Here's a company, I thought, with the most entrenched
brand mystique of all American imports. Volkswagen is, and has been since they
started bringing cars here, a cheap car. A Volkswagen is cheap at its essence,
cheap to its very core. (I know, I owned a Golf.) To suggest that VW could
elevate themselves to Mercedes-Benz levels sounded to me like old Piech had just
put himself on a strict diet of hallucinogens and amphetamines.
It's funny how things change. Mercedes-Benz has laid out a couple lines of
dumbed-down vehicles (one thinks of the E-class and the M-class) and VW's new
Beetle has better build quality than either of them at $15,200. But the new
Volkswagen that most amazes me is the Passat. Here is a car that is mechanically
identical to the Audi A4 and A6 in almost every respect--from engines,
suspensions, materials, and now for this year, four-wheel-drivetrains--yet costs
thousands less than an A4, and almost ten thousand less than an A6. For this
you'd expect some trade off, some acne-blemished face to its stellar
personality, but there's none of that. The Passat goes and handles and rides
just like its Audi brethren, and looks just as good. It looks distinct from the
Audis, but the styling is as, if not more, confident, with purer shapes and less
ornamentation. The interior is so wonderfully put together and so elegantly
wrought that you almost think you are in an Audi, or dare I say it, a good old
Mercedes-Benz.
So tell me, why would you buy an Audi A4? An A6? For that matter, why would you
buy a Benz? Dr. Piech wants to know.—Eddie Alterman
On Sale: now
Base price: $20,750
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