New Passat B8 review

[zzc2010]

Buy an Arteon they are sooo much more lubly....

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Lubly is endless. Buy a Bentley. XD


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[Rocket36]

Personally, I think R line pack looks best on pure white.

I used to think that too... Then I saw it in person on silver! LURV!

[el1x]

Personally, I think R line pack looks best on pure white.

I agree.

I haven't posted a pic of the beauty, picked up in May'17 for the wife to use as her daily.
She loves it, and rightly so, it's hard to fault.

[Rocket36]

I agree.

I haven't posted a pic of the beauty, picked up in May'17 for the wife to use as her daily.
She loves it, and rightly so, it's hard to fault.

VERY NICE!!! I do like the white. Love that I ended up with silver for the wife's daily. I only wish the R-Line pack for the diesel had the same wheels.

[Gbranca1]

VERY NICE!!! I do like the white. Love that I ended up with silver for the wife's daily. I only wish the R-Line pack for the diesel had the same wheels.

I think that may be something to do with the my18 models....
I'll be picking up a my16 140tdi rline in a couple of weeks and it definitely has the same rline rims as the 206r



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[Passerati]

I personally prefer the design of the Monterrey’s over the others...

[mysteryman1961]

Attachment 19631Attachment 19630


Base model, simply put, looks ugly. Who signed off on the base model wheels??? R-Line wagon looks quite agressive compared to outgoing models

Yes.....who did sign off on them,they do look stunning when they are clean,but they are hard to clean.

[5paul0]

When I had the opti cote put on the paint they did the wheels also. I only have to spray the wheels with a tight stream of water and they come clean. Then just a quick wipe with a microfiber cloth and they are really clean

[Rocket36]

When I had the opti cote put on the paint they did the wheels also. I only have to spray the wheels with a tight stream of water and they come clean. Then just a quick wipe with a microfiber cloth and they are really clean

I was going to suggest Ceramic Pro nano paint protection, applied by a detailer that knows what they're doing. I plan to have my new car, rims and interior done.

[Jubas]

Hi all,

New member to the forum, and new VW owner for the first time too. I picked up a MY18 Comfortline with R-Line option pack about three weeks ago for a great price. I'd been cross-shopping the Skoda Superb and Subaru Outback, but was a) very impressed with the Passat (most so, in fact), and b) got the best price (relatively) for the VW. I had expected to walk away with the Superb, but it felt like a much, much bigger car to drive, and while there was more legroom out back, the actual width across the rear seats (armrest-armrest) was worse than the Passat, even though the outside dimensions of the Superb were bigger. Baby #1 is on the way, and I'm anticipating a few trips with the 'grandparents' in the back too. I took it to Frank at Definitive for paint protection as well as windows/wheels and it’s looking mint

We took the car out for its first proper drive over the weekend, down the south coast from Sydney via the RNP, staying the night in Kangaroo valley, and back home via the southern highlands. I chose the route so that I got to drive up and down the southern highlands a few times - up to Robertson via macquarie pass, back down via Jamberoo, up mount cambewara, back down to the kangaroo valley, and then up to Moss Vale via Fitzroy falls. A great route for driving fun.

Coming from a rather dated, much smaller 2002 323 SP20, these are my initial thoughts:

Pros:

• A beautifully handling car. I suspect this comes down to the altered suspension from the R-Line pack a bit, but there was no hint of understeer, the car was responsive with quick inputs to steering controls yielding rapid direction changes.
• Very little road noise coming through with it being very easy to hold a conversation across rough, patchy country roads
• Incredible fuel economy (well, at least compared to the 323 I think). I've not done the calculations, but we got 450kms from half a fuel tank. A combination of city and country driving.. i'd say probably 25% city, 75% country by time. Most of that time was spent in Eco mode, but all the climbs in the southern highlands were in Sports/Manual mode with some quite spirited driving.
• Interior finish is fantastic - love the R-line seats, everything feels a notch up on the Superb/Outback
• Adaptive Cruise Control - where have you been all my life? Sitting on the freeway was ridiculously easy. The 323 had no cruise control at all and needed to sit on about 3-3.5k revs to hold 110 with the accelerator depressed the whole way. It made Sydney-Melbourne trips.. interesting. Now, I simply set the ACC and just cruise
• Adaptive lane controls - the first time it steered me back into my lane I had a mild heart attack, but this is just fantastic technology. We tested it on the freeway (with no other cars around) and it's about as autonomous as we would like
• Visibility from the car is fantastic. I had sat in a Mazda 6 wagon, but the C pillars were huge and rear visibility was average. The passat's pillars are all very slight making it easy to check blindspots (yes, I still do this manually)
• Boot space is simply ridiculous – the main reason for us upgrading was that the 323 had a child seat anchor point at the lip of the boot, going diagonally across the luggage space. It meant that we couldn’t fit a car seat + pram in at the same time. Now, the boot is simply cavernous – the wife is very happy
• Small things make a difference: the respective fog light turning on when navigating tight bends at night (or the car park). It’s not earth shattering, but a nice touch
• The car simply looks good. The body proportions, lines, accents, all come together really nicely. I’ve had a number of people mention out of the blue that the car looks great.

Concerns/constructive criticism:

• Android Auto is still not 100%. This was a major drawcard for me. Mapping, messaging are all fantastic, but Spotify is really not up to scratch: the 5 touch rule is just a pain; voice searching doesn’t work well at all; it’s the only ‘app’ that doesn’t work on occasion for me. It’s very frustrating at times – I’ll need to be more proactive in future: loading up playlists so that they’re in the ‘recently played’ category for example
• I have detailed trip data, but can’t seem to see Range anywhere? Perhaps a setting I’ve missed. I’ve checked the ‘fuel consumption’ screen on the digital dash to no avail
• There’s a fair amount of torque going through those front tyres, and given the handling, I suspect they’re pretty soft.. I wonder what durability will be like. I only really felt it going up the passes, so perhaps it won’t be so bad day-to-day. It was easier to get a feel for traction on the 323 where you felt a bit less insulated from the road.
• ACC is great, but I really had to play with the ‘distance in front’ – on the middle distance setting, people would overtake and jump into the spot in front of me, then slow down (typical freeway driving in Australia I find – much worse the closer to Sydney). The middle distance was too appealing for others, and so I found I was just getting shuffled back. It made me really aware of how closely we tend to follow each other on freeways here.. not great. I changed it down to a 'closer' setting but I was a little less comfortable with the whole system at that distance.
• The driving mode button on the left is a real pain – not the end of the world, but such an obvious oversight. It’s a little annoying they didn’t switch it to the right – I wonder if there’s a hack/work around we can do?
• My driving mode doesn’t get remembered when I get in/out of the car – the central dash will remember the mode, but the actual gears will not be right (i.e. as they display in the digital dash – D1 instead of E1, D2 instead of E2 etc). I have to manually reselect the mode to get it right
• Low front bumper – I need to be a little conscious with driveways.. only once where I’ve touched slightly, but it gave me a bit of a fright
• Sometimes there is an element of DSG hesitance in town, but it’s ok. Engine auto-off is a little annoying, and I’d be keen to see figures on the impact it has. I know it can be coded off, but I’ll probably wait for the warranty to run its course..

Edit: And I should mention.. I didn't end up getting the luxury pack due to concerns about the longevity of the sunroof (we tend to keep our cars a while). I would have loved the lights though.. I've seen lighting modules advertised as aftermarket parts, so I wonder whether it's possible to upgrade the halogen units.. again, once the warranty expires I suspect!