Volkswagen Passat 2.0 SE TDI: Middle of the road

The new Volkswagen Passat is a solid performer that's hard to fault. But Michael Booth can't help wishing it was just a little more exciting

Price on the road £18,405
Maximum speed 130mph (0-62mph in 9.8 seconds)
Combined fuel consumption 47.1mpg
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I can remember the days when Volkswagen's Passat was a bit of an embarrassment, a poor substitute for a Ford Cortina. A friend of mine bought one second hand for £50 as his first car and then hand-painted smiley faces all over it. I can't see that happening with more modern versions, however. For example, the most recent generation was based on the Audi A4, lasted for almost a decade and was hugely influential (the Skoda Superb is virtually a direct copy).

In contrast, the new, updated version is built around a stretched version of the current Golf platform. The trouble is, one of the chief selling points of the last Passat was that, essentially, you got an Audi A4 at a heavy discount so, to try to distract potential buyers from the new car's more prosaic underpinnings, it now sports an inverted, Audi-style grille plated in the shiniest chrome I have ever seen. I hear that all VWs will have shiny fangs like this in the future, but it seems a bit dressy to me. To me Volkswagen represents quality with discretion; they shouldn't look like they can be used to ram-raid Currys.

Despite all of this, the Passat is still a deeply impressive car. The Golf substructure is, in fact, a fine choice, bringing a subtle combination of agility and comfort. The Passat also has several features that have filtered down from its posh big brother, Volkswagen's flagship Phaeton, limousine, including complex climate control and bi-xenon headlights that turn to see round corners. Less happily, the Passat also has the Phaeton's electronic parking brake - as fine an example of unnecessary meddling as you will come across this year. We all know how to use a handbrake, and we all now where the lever is. Relocate it to a button mounted to the right of the steering wheel and those of us of a less adaptable persuasion will get awfully distressed when they can't find it in the middle of a hill start.

People have tended to buy Passats, essentially, for their peerless quality. Typical owners are aged between 40 and 50, conservative (though not necessarily Conservative), relatively well off (to the extent that they are considering a new conservatory even though the old one is only about eight years old) and really like what Anne Robinson is doing with her hair these days. They live in Guildford, in a cul-de-sac so that young men in hatchbacks with loud stereos can't drive past, and have two young children (Alan and Chloe). For them a BMW is just too flash, a Ford is too blue collar and Coldplay are just what they've been waiting for ever since Deacon Blue broke up: "a nicer U2, with pianos". (This also means they now buy Fair Trade chocolate, even though they prefer Galaxy.)

If all this sounds snide, I don't mean to be. Passat owners aren't bad people; they're not pure, unadulterated evil in the way that, say, Volvo drivers are (only joking), and their choice of car is hard to fault objectively. I spent a half hour in my Passat trying to break things, but failed. It looks innocuous enough too, although the saloon is a little awkward side-on (the rearward shut line of the back doors is a strident diagonal, which makes it look as if the boot has been grafted on from another car), but the 2-litre diesel engine, which will most likely be by far the most popular option, is fine as far as diesels go (which is only up to about 4,000rpm, sadly). It's a long, long way from the original Passat, but I still can't help thinking a smiley face wouldn't go amiss.

It's a Classic: Volkswagen 411

Once upon a time Volkswagen saloons didn't try to look like Audis, they looked like the car pictured on the right - in other words, like nothing else on the road. This is the 411 (or Type 4) of 1968, a homely looking, rear-engined four-door, developed from the two-door Type 3, which itself was a kind of grown-up Beetle. This meant it had a rear-mounted, air-cooled four-cylinder engine - in this case a 1.6-litre. Unfortunately, by the time the 411 hit the market this format was looking decidedly long in the tooth and had been largely discredited (although Porsche still persevere). Its meagre performance (it struggled to reach 90mph and took 14 seconds to hit 60mph), and high cost, hardly helped endear it to the British car-buying public, which is why you have probably never seen a 411. But, despite all of this, 355,300 were sold in four years, mainly in Germany and the US. In the end though, it was the Golf that brought about the end of the 411 and its ilk. Stylish, practical, compact and cheap, the Golf was everything the 411 wasn't.