(b.) a television series in which smooth-skinned actors in their middle twenties attempt to portray teens navigating the tumultuous rapids of modern adolescence by the application of close-part harmony; immensely popular when it debuted, but trailed off in the second season when it began getting a little preachy and then there was that part where Rachel was all like, “Finn, I need to let you fly free,” and…

(b.) Some TV show which I have never seen.

(c.) The best car in the current Volkswagen Model range.

Whaddya mean it’s pronounced “Gee-El-Eye”?


Now, no review of Volkswagen’s warmed-up compact sedan would be complete without a few Oh! Snap! cracks at how thoroughly Vee-dub has un-pimped the regular Jetta. Fans of the German marque are appalled – appalled I tells ya – at the dumbed-down, embiggened and encheapened Kraut-rolla the once-sprightly Jetta has ballooned into.

‘Twas as though they had wandered into the VW showroom expecting the usual delicious and slightly unreliable bratwurst and been handed an Ikea hot-dog instead. Yes, a bargain at just 99 cents, but made of gym-mat foam and not tasty pork by-products.

Critics were apoplectic, and the buying public responded immediately – by completely ignoring them and snapping up thousands of Jettas. I quite enjoy that, as it must have punctured a few bombastic egos.

Not to worry though, as VW still sells a premium smokie-on-a-bun for all you sausage enthusiasts out there.

And here it is. In profile, the GLI is quite a bit better looking than I remember, a slick blend of sleek aerodynamicism and teutonic crispness set off by the traditionally chunky five-spoke Volkswagen alloys, and-

Oh wait, no, this is a Kia Rio. Oops.

That’s better. No, wait: no it isn’t.

One criticism of the GLI immediately is that it appears to be just fifteen feet of some car. I imagine that if you went down to the Car Store and asked for, “One Car, please. What? Oh I don’t know… German flavour I suppose,” then this is what you’d get.

Yes, it has two-tone, multi-spoke alloy wheels and a colour-matched grille – but what doesn’t these days? I will say that the Glee looks fairly good here in black, but if you take a look at the car Jack drove in his 2.0T Intramural League test, a silver GLI can be about as bland as unsalted porridge.

However, methinks this is a very, very good thing. A Lamborghini Reventon might look like a stealth fighter, but the Glee is actually a stealth car: just another five-seater people-pod; one more unremarkable corpuscle blending in with the flow on an arterial highway. Handy if you’re going to cane it a little, but more on that in a bit.

The interior of the Glee is slightly less stealthy; most notably, that flat-bottomed steering wheel is just the tiniest bit boy-racer. And, as apparently dictated by some international sporty car interior standard first established in the early Eighties, there’s plenty of red stitching everywhere.

Other than that though, it’s a sensible, conservative sort of place to be, with comfortable seats, an immense amount of rear legroom and a cavernous trunk. And there’s another advantage too.

If you were picking up your new fiancee’s parents at the airport, and you didn’t quite get along with them just yet, being in that not-good-enough-for-our-son/daughter zone (that sometimes never goes away), you could be perfectly safe arriving in a GLI.

A GTI? A ‘Speed3? A WRX? Those’d be something different, but this car would elicit a future-father-in-law’s reluctant nod and/or a near-mother-in-law’s mollified sniff. It’s not showy. It’s not racy. It’s sensible and circumspect and even a little bit nice. Maybe this kid’s got a good head on his/her shoulders after all.

Then, on the drive home, you completely. Ruin. Everything.

First, a painful admission. I had championed Subaru’s flat-four turbo as being the best-sounding four-pot on the market today. I was wrong.

It took four different axle-backs on the back of my personal WRX to find the right blend of growly aggression without boorish bellowing. VW got it right straight out of the factory with a thrumpety symphony that’s part panthera tigris purr, and part strafing-run Stuka. The ubiquitous 200hp 2.0T has never sounded better.

As such, you will want to dip into the power reserves early and often, and with a phenomenally low torque peak providing insta-shove around 1700rpm, the Glee provokes… well, just see definition (a.)

Right. Nearly forgot to complain about the lack of a traction control button. Yes, this is either a silly oversight or one of the chintziest cost-cutting measures imaginable, but it didn’t really bother me once.

We live in a world where a Hyundai puts out a turbo-four with a full 25% more power than VW’s version, but there’s more to it than just peak horsepower figures. The Glee isn’t underpowered, and it’s not overpowered. It’s right-powered.

Yes, there are moments where a little more thrust would not have gone amiss, but the whole package is so composed-yet-thrilling that you find yourself willing the car along, wringing it out, diving into the corners and blasting out of them. Meanwhile, your future mother-in-law is clutching her purse with a white-knuckled grip implying that hissed undertones are about to be exchanged with her son/daughter on the subject of That Young Man/Woman.

But what do you care? It’d be easy enough to back off the throttle and find that the GLI is a comfortable cruiser with its softer-than-a-GTI suspension. The Fender-brand stereo is phenomenal and the fuel economy can even be quite good, if you’re gentle.

Yet whenever I climbed into my 6-speed tester, I experienced a kinship of the sort that Tazio Nuvolari must have felt, nursing his somewhat-wheezy Alfa-Romeo to that now-legendary victory over the Auto-Union juggernauts. It seems Mazda isn’t the only company that knows something about Jinba Ittai.

The GLI is a joy to drive, and shockingly, shockingly good in wet weather. Perhaps it’s the relative softness of the suspension, perhaps it’s the soft-compound of the Continental winter tires this tester was equipped with, but the level of grip that the GLI has in a wet corner is extremely surprising and gratifying. But then, so’s the rest of the car.

Business-like exterior, comfortable interior: a sedate-looking sedan that’s capable of thrilling dynamically but prefers not to shout about it. Maybe I’m stretching, but the GLI could just be this generation’s E39 BMW. It’s that good.

But – and here comes a But so big that it should be written in flaming letters three miles high; a Mix-a-lot-sized conjunction that I don’t like (and I cannot lie) – but, it’s still a Volkswagen, and that means Your Mileage May Vary.

After a charming week with the GLI, I found myself sitting at the ferry terminal late at night, waiting to pick up my wife (I’ve been married for coming-on 6 years, the in-laws threw in the towel long ago). Docking was inevitably delayed, and as I waited, the local station began playing Young the Giant’s “My Body.” As the first kicks of the bass drum came through, the back panel of the GLI decided it was time to start buzzing like the trunk of a 90s Civic with a Bazooka tube. At all volumes.

This car, you understand, had all of 1500 miles on the clock, and while press cars generally take more abuse than somebody who expresses a political viewpoint in the comments section of a Youtube video, I generally have to say this failing was unacceptable. Unacceptable, or at least very disappointing.

Volkswagen has always been like this. Some owners have never had a problem, others have had nothing but problems. Still others have had a up-and-down track record that reads like the fortunes of a character on Days of Our Lives. Uh, which I have also never seen.

So can I recommend the GLI? Yes, though not unreservedly. It’s a fantastic car, but I’m not sure how it’s going to be next season.

Volkswagen provided the car reviewed and insurance

While other VWs may get an expressive fascia, the new Passat is pure conservative VW. From the geometric grille to the character line that’s as flat as Kansas, the Passat never strikes a pose that would offend a conservative mid-size shopper. If you want a VW with more excitement or Euro flair, the CC brings more aggressive bumpers, more chrome and sexier tail lights to the party. While some in the press have called the Passat boring, I would posit the sedate lines will help the Passat age more gracefully than some of the competition, most notably the new Sonata.

Those of us that seriously considered the previous generation Passat when purchasing a near-luxury vehicle like an Acura or Volvo (myself included) will be disappointed with the interior. The new Passat is now $8,000 cheaper than the previous car, and it’s re-positioning as a mid-size, rather than near-luxury car meant that something had to give. Mid-size shoppers demand expansive rather than expensive cabins, and VW took note. Camcord shoppers also place fuel economy, electronic doodads and rear-seat leg room higher on their list than squishy dash bits.  As a result, the new Passat is as mainstream as any, with parts quality a notch below the outgoing model but easily on par with Ford’s Fusion and the new Camry, right down to the fake wood on the dash.

The lack of real tree is just one of the changes that VW made to pull the Passat out of the near-luxury market. Now missing at any trim level are  HID headlamps, optional AWD (although the rumor mill says it may be available later), the turbo four-cylinder engine, a station wagon variant, backup camera, rain sensing wipers, rear seat HVAC vents and a few other items that the VWVortex crowd feels are essential for a Passat. All this really means to the shopper is that the Passat is finally aimed squarely at Camry and Accord shoppers who don’t buy those sorts of options anway. Perhaps because of VW’s reliability numbers in past years the one standard feature VW didn’t remove is their 3 year/36,000 mile scheduled maintenance included on every Passat.

Fitting in with the rest of the class, VW fitted a 2.5 liter naturally aspirated base engine under the hood. Unlike the competition, the Passat’s engine sports a 5-cylinder design. The five-banger is smoother than the competition’s base engines and the average shopper won’t notice (or won’t care about) the odd cylinder count. Channeling the 170HP and 177lb-ft of torque to the front wheels is a standard 6-speed automatic (SE models have a manual option while TDI and V6 models get a 6-speed DSG). 2.5 shoppers aren’t likely to get hot and bothered for a DSG either, as long as they don’t have to work a clutch and gearshifter, and the combination delivers 22MPG city and 31MPG highway according to the EPA. Over our 480 miles with the Passat we averaged a respectable 28.5MPG in mixed driving with highway runs easily hitting the advertised 31MPG.

The Passat’s longer wheelbase (up 3.7 inches from 2010) pays dividends with a smoother highway ride, but notably less poise in the corners compared to the old model. While the tuning of the suspension may be slightly softer than before, much of the difference comes down to a rubber change. The outgoing model wore fairly wide (for a mass-market car) 235/45R17 shoes while the new Passat slips on svelte 215/55R17s. I like my tires wide,but this change brings the Passat in line with the Camry, Acrcord and Mazda 6 which all wear 215-width rubber on comparable models. Aiding the Passat’s agility, which I subjectively place somewhere between a Camry and a Mazda 6, is a fairly light 3,221lb curb weight.

As Ford has shown with their SYNC product, volume car shoppers want technology. VW has unfortunately decided that your level of infotainment tech directly relates to a trim level. While it is possible to upgrade some of these items after you drive off the lot, it’s far easier if you know what you want going in. Base models have standard Bluetooth integration with streaming audio, an auxiliary input jack and 9 speakers. Jumping up to the SE trim may get you a touch-screen interface and Sirius satellite radio but if iPod love is what you’re after you’ll only find that in the “SE with Sunroof and Navigation” or higher trims. The top-of-the-line SEL model will get you 400 watts of Fender amplification, and a subwoofer that’s tuned toward the “boomy” side of the baseline.

The base infotainment system, dubbed “RNS315″  gives you a 5 inch medium-resolution (400×240) touchscreen display, a single CD player and Sirius satellite radio. Stepping up to the SEL we tested gets you the “RNS 510” which is a 6.5 inch high-resolution (800×480) touchscreen system with a single slot DVD player and 45GB of hard drive storage split between maps (15GB) and personal music storage (25GB). The 510 is also capable of displaying live traffic data as well as “Sirius Travel Link” fuel prices, ski info, sports scores, weather forecasts and movie listings. While most of the information is superfluous, the fuel pricing is handy, especially if you opt for a diesel Passat as locating a diesel station can be tricky at times. The traffic and Travel Link features require a Sirius subscription and VW tosses in a 6-month trial for free. While I normally think the live traffic feature is worth the cost, VW has relegated traffic displays to a single map view rather than overlaying the information on all map views as most other manufacturers do so you might just skip the service if you have a smartphone and Google maps.

Now to the nitty-gritty. In 2011 the average vehicle sold in the US left the dealer show room for just under $30,000 before taxes. Since VW is aiming straight at the mainstream it should be no surprise that our SEL tester rang in at $28,395 (not including a $770 destination charge). Based on my research, the Passat compares well with the Camry and Accord but the Hyundai Sonata enjoys a pricing and feature advantage over the VW, while also possessing more radical styling and a Hyundai badge. My local VW dealer wouldn’t give me any firm numbers, but indicated the “2.5 SE with Sunroof” ($25,625) and “2.5 SE with Sunroof and Navigation” ($26,795) were their top selling Passat models.

Last time I new-car-shopped I was torn between the Lexus IS350, a Passat 3.6 4Motion and a Volvo S60R. While the R got the final nod, this speaks to the market position the former Passat held. This position seems to be the hardest thing for VW lovers, VW shoppers and the automotive press to let go of. This Passat is no longer a Volvo/Acura competitor. Instead, it’s exactly what the American shoppers asked for: a grown up Jetta. As painful as this may be to hear, it’s good for VW, and it’s good for the Camcord shopper looking for something different. For the shopper looking to replace their 2007 Passat with a new VW or the forum fanoy that’s broken hearted VW has “ruined” the Passat, get over it. Your Passat is the Volkswagen CC.

Volkswagen provided the vehicle, insurance and one tank of gas for this review.

Specifications as tested

0-30:3 seconds

0-60: 8.9 seconds

1/4 mile: 16.9 @ 82.9MPH

Observed fuel economy: 28.5MPG over 480 miles

I was curious about the car. After all, after reading all the international bad press on it, and the usual tiresome panting of the Brazilian press, I wanted to know: Could it be that bad?

Jumping into it, my first impression was not that good. You see, my sister had been driving the car and the seat was all the way up and snug against the steering wheel. After fiddlingg around with the controls and wrestling the seat into a good position for me, I thought, is this really well thought out? I mean, it took me a good three minutes to do all the adjustments. Granted, it’s not a problem after you get used to them, but intuitive it is not. Well, maybe if you have a VW it wouldn’t be a problem as you’d be pretty used to the different levers and such that need pulling, pushing and shoving. As I have read many times in the press, all the buttons and levers and switches are pretty much standard fare across the VeeDub line.

Second impression was generally good. The plastics and such had a nice look about them. The seats were covered in leather. The design was conservative, but all the required doodads were there. Then I started prodding and pulling and pushing. Meh. I quickly found out that while visually appealing, the stuff had the same tactile feel as those in a R$30,000 Gol. Not good. I also noticed that the leather wasn’t real. In fact, it was some of the worst imitation leather I’d sat on recently. My neighborhood upholsterer offers better Naugahide.

The steering wheel had a nice, modern design. Like with the alleged leather though, it was easy to see that VW was pinching pennies. This version’s wheel does not have the audio controls and such on it. The place where they should be has a blingy fake aluminum finish on the higher trim level. In this lowly version it’s just an expanse of drab, grey plastic. The wheel itself is no better than that found in lesser VWs. The design is better, but it just isn’t that nice a place to rest your hands. It’s not thick and at least my hands did not naturally find a comfortable position. Later, while driving, I also noticed the strange bulge in the A column inside the car. Probably to house the window bags that this car did not have. I felt it was uncomfortably close to my head and obstructed my vision out the car somewhat. Again, you’d get used to it, but isn’t there a way to do it better?

After I had taken in the car’s inside, I realized I hadn’t even stopped to look at the car’s exterior. I realized then that the design is conservative to the point of being anonymous. So, I decided to get out again and analyze it. I’d seen it in photos and had not thought much of it. Looking upon the car with my own eyes, I confirmed that impression. It’s just a big sedan. That face is now spread throughout VW’s Brazilian line. The headlights are the simple ones. Not good for such an expensive car. The backlights have that Audi going on and being horizontal help to widen the car visually. It’s a nice enough design. Guess you can call it good in the time-honored VW tradition. With the competition that this car faces, I thought it could use some flair. One word kept coming to my mind. Anodyne.

The proof though is in the driving, right? So I fired it up and backed up my dad’s steep driveway. I remember that I’d read that this engine was good for 120 ponies on ethanol and not even that much on the concoction known as Brazilian gasoline. It handled the climb well enough. So far so good.

As I started driving through the lazy streets that make up my dad’s gated community a strange sensation came over me. I had the vivid impression I was back in 1986 or thereabouts. At that time my dad had a VW Santana Quantum, which was VW do Brasil’s version of the Audi 100 station wagon. I learned to drive in that car. It was uncanny, but more than 20 years late, the feel of the car was like I remembered the Quantum. So odd.

It felt solid. I just slowly drove along and savored it. The community’s streets are littered with speed bumps and ups and downs. I came to a stretch that was flat and has a speed bump that’s lower than the others. I stomped on the pedal. The car didn’t go. I expected better. As we hit the speed bump I was not nearly at the speed I had anticipated mentally. That turned out to be a good thing as I felt the suspension with its torsion beam out back was just not up to the task. It was my first indication of how easy it would be to unsettle the car.

As I left the community I decided to take the road and go to the city. As I accelerated to merge into traffic, the déjà vu hit me again. Contrary to most modern cars that rev happily, this engine just doesn’t. It behaves like that 2.0 engine from the 80s. Good back then, now not anymore.

The road was mostly empty. I started putting the car through its paces. It was an unwilling partner. Slow and noisy when fast. Lazy when stuck behind a slower vehicle and asked to overtake. In short, not quite up to the task of motivating this relatively heavy car (give or take 1,350 kg).

Well, maybe it’s good in the curves? It was a dastardly day. Rainy and gloomy. I felt like I was somewhere in England. I tried but soon gave up pushing it. It wasn’t worth the effort and danger.

I pushed on. I reached the point where there are some nice, twisty country roads. I went for it.

There the pavement was much more worn. The curves were more acute. In spite of the conditions, I decided to force it a little. The car’s behavior soon conspired, together with the grayness of the day, to make me feel like the weather: Gloomy. No, on these country roads this car can’t dance. The back is always threatening to escape. The engine can’t rev. It’s slow to pick up speeds after the curves. I slowed down. The car settled down. Over the rough patches I was reminded how I felt the suspension is lacking. In the good German tradition it’s tauter than most of its peers. But why? It’s no sports car. Far from that. So, it’d be much better if VW would just come out the closet (as it were) and make the suspension more comfortable and in tune to the car’s nature.

Well, back to the main road. It’s a simple two-lane blacktop. But there are now more cars. I’m having a hard time overtaking them. Even puny little 1.0s. The curves, though not as acute as the side roads, slow me down. I started noticing the noise of the water hitting the car’s belly, the rain pelting the roof. For 70k I though it needed some more noise dampening

I had enough. In this weather why even bother to take it into town? In stop and go traffic I could predict its behavior. The 5-speed manual would shift well enough though I think that like in other VWs the stick is just a little too low for me. The throws are short and precise, but nothing special. The clutch is light enough, but again, nothing special. In city driving I’d have the chance to test the car’s infotainment system, but I realized I don’t give a rat’s ass for that. The car was boring me. Time to head back.

As I did so, I thought: Who is this car for? It’s too expensive for most folks with families in Brazil. It’s definitely not for young people. It’s not for an enthusiast as amply demonstrated. I sadly come to the conclusion this new Jetta is for those who don’t like driving. Those who want a big car and just want to blend in. Those who want a car from a respectable brand that will thusly keep its value and be an easy sell. In short, it’s perfect for most drivers of the world today. No wonder it’s selling well. I believe it’s outselling the Civic, Vectra, Fluence. However, it probably won’t reach the market-segment-leading-Corolla. It caters to the same crowd.

As I eased into the garage my brother-in-law comes out. He asks how I’d liked the car. Not wanting to be impolite, I turned the question back on him. He used a Brazilian expression to the effect that the car was plastic-fantastic. I asked him to elaborate. He talked about how he had just taken a highway trip and how he felt the car didn’t do curves. How he though the engine was unrefined and didn’t make up for its lack of power with economy. He told me how he’d pleaded with his boss to get another car. Not being a VW fan himself he cited a number of cars he felt would be better to drive.

Nothing positive? Well, he said, it fit his family of three young girls well enough. So it’d do well with the Germans he’d be driving to and fro. The trunk could swallow a good number of bags. He paused and commented how hard-pressed he was feeling to remember anything else. I had an insight then and told him that I was under the impression the car was a Logan for richer folk. Bland, big and boring. He laughed.

Basically then, we were in agreement. Neither of us would spend our sweated dime on the car. It was too expensive for what it offered. In a word, underwhelming. If you ever do get the car, do yourself a favor and get the higher trim. Maybe with the bigger output motor and the multilink suspension, this car could be fun. I suspect though that even in that case, this car just isn’t for me.

Don’t take my word for it. If you like, go and test drive it.

As they say, the proof is in the driving.

Editor’s Note: Be aware that photos are larger than the usual format.

When I told friends that my European vacation would give me the opportunity to test a few European cars, their reactions fit a certain pattern: “So you’re going to be running around Europe in Porsches and Audis?” they asked. “Can I have your job?”

“No such luck,” I replied. “I’ve got a Hyundai station wagon and a VW minivan lined up.”

And though my friends may have been disappointed, I certainly wasn’t. After all, I expected great things from the Hyundai i40 I had during my first week, and I was actually quite excited to have secured a VW Sharan for week two. After all, I have something of a history with minivans (I drove a Grand Caravan in High School, the only vehicle I’ve ever crashed), and I was looking forward to comparing VW’s new Euro-MPV to its US “counterpart,” the Chrysler-rebadge VW Routan. If VW would rather sell a rebadged Town & Country than the slick little MPV I received straight from Wolfsburg with only 3,500 km on the clock, surely there was a reason. And I was determined to find it out.

VW’s newest Sharan debuted last year as a 2011 model, ditching the B-VX62 platform that had been jointly developed with Ford, in favor of the new MQB modular platform which could eventually underpin as many as 60 models, from subcompacts to “Large MPVs” like the Sharan. Some 11 inches shorter than the Routan and with a wheelbase that’s over six inches shorter, the Sharan would be considered a “Large MPV” only in Europe. On the other hand, it’s no compact minivan either, splitting the difference between the Routan and the newest Mazda5 almost perfectly (11 inches shorter than Routan, 10 inches longer than Mazda5). And it makes the most of that space: though available as base with only five seats, our tester came with the seven-seat option, and though it impinges upon cargo room considerably, the third row is no penalty box. At a little over six foot tall, I could easily occupy the Sharan’s hinterlands for all but the longest hauls, with sufficient headroom and only slightly limited legroom. In short, like the i40, the Sharan’s size alone does not preclude the possibility of US-market service.

And in return for the considerable extra space it gives up to the Routan, the Sharan offers all of the other joys of authentic, Euro-spec Volkswagen goodness. The exterior is, if a bit overly subtle, a far more handsome and complete design than the somewhat awkward Routan. And equipped with adaptive bi-xenon and LED headlights and a gigantic panoramic moonroof, one could almost imagine imagine the schnörkellos Sharan as Audi’s first foray into the world of MPVs. If you think minivans are incapable of being passable for even the most fashionable young families, take a moment to peruse the photos in the gallery below.

Meanwhile, the impressions of quality continue when you step inside. Far from the new world of disappointingly cost-cut interiors in US-market Vee-Dubs like Jetta and Passat, the Sharan’s interior is classic Volkswagen. Dash plastics are yielding to the touch but solidly situated, with only a slightly coarse “grain” on the surfacing giving an impression of less-than-top-notch quality. From the switches to the knobs, from materials to design and assembly, the contrast to American-market VWs can not be mistaken, although they don’t stand out much in pictures. Add optional leather upholstery with suede-alike inserts, VW’s top-of-the-line navigation system, parking sensors and backup camera, fully-electric side sliders and rear hatch, multi-zone climate control, the previously-mentioned panoramic moonroof, heated seats, keyless-go, stop-start, auto-park function and yes, adaptive suspension (!) and this mass-market-branded minivan truly becomes the equal of some Audis (even more so with optional 168 HP TDI engine and AWD). For a price, of course (more on that shortly).

Settle into the driver’s seat, and the first thing you notice is that the driving position is incredibly bus-like. In order to make the most of the Sharan’s (relatively) limited space, you sit high and upright on typically firm seats, while your feet reach down at a sharp angle for the three pedals and you work the long-ish throw shifter with a bit of a trucker-style downward reach. It takes a moment to get used to, especially after a week in the low-slung Hyundai wagon, but the seating position gives a commanding view of the road, and thanks to a tall roof, there’s still a vaulted cathedral worth of headroom above. All in all, then, there’s no mistaking that you’re driving a minivan, albeit a somewhat smaller, considerably more premium phenotype of the species than those we’re accustomed to in the United States.

Press in the clutch and poke the starter button, and the 140 HP version of VW’s 2.0 TDI engine rumbles subtly to life. If the i40 astounded with the refinement of its diesel engine, the Sharan made me forget almost entirely that we were driving under oil-burning power. Only the diesel’s distinctive torque and unwillingness to rev (and some clatter on cold morning warm-ups) betrayed the dieselness of this altogether capable little lump. With only 236 lb-ft to motivate some 4,300 lbs, progress was not exactly brisk, but performance was considerably more satisfying than the numbers suggest (11.4 seconds 0-100km)… and on the autobahn it had no trouble cruising at triple-digit (MPH) speeds.

Inevitably, however, the Sharan’s aerodynamics and weight conspired to push reported fuel economy way down in both high-speed cruising and brisk driving on mountain roads. Though rated at 5.4 l/100km in “extraurban” driving, the Sharan’s observed economy was rarely below 6 l/100km (~40 MPG), and often registered as high as 9 l/100km (26 MPG). On the other hand, higher numbers often came at some altitude, when climbing hills and cruising at higher speeds… still, after the Hyundai’s remarkably consistent economy, the Sharan was not as frugal as I might have hoped. On the other hand, stop-start helped urban fuel economy, and in typical European driving the 6.2 l/100km (~38 MPG) “combined” rating seemed highly achievable. Not bad for a seven-seater minivan.

Behind the wheel of such a full-fat, Euro-focused minivan, I will admit to having harbored some hope that the Sharan would be a dynamic revelation compared to the typically saggy-bouncy-leany style of the typical American minivan. Initial impressions, however, proved that my expectations were way out of line. Steering feel seemed nearly American-light at first, and though the suspension didn’t outright wallow, it certainly allowed far more lean than I had expected. Combined with a relatively high curb weight, the soft suspension provides great ride comfort and stability at speed, but also lets things to fall apart miserably in corners. The steering lacked precision and front-end bite, while the soft, well-laden chassis struggled to stay on the same page as the driver’s inputs when pushed even slightly. The overall impression was, then, not entirely unlike what any American would expect from a minivan: an emphasis on comfort (albeit with better damping and more manageable size than most US offerings), and a chassis that discourages more than a responsible, familial pace. And unlike my old high school Caravan V6, the power was sufficiently insufficient to reinforce that mode of travel.

At least that’s what I thought until I realized that our tester had the optional adaptive suspension, and that I had been experiencing the Sharan in “normal mode.” Now, I have no idea who in their right mind would spend over a thousand Euros to equip their family-hauler with the choice between “normal,” “comfort,” and “sport” suspension/steering modes (let alone the €770 lowered “sport suspension” which our tester did not have). But thanks to Europe’s build-to-order market, this minivan had a sport mode, and once selected, I left it there for the rest of our time with the Sharan. Though I don’t want to oversell the improvement of firmer damper settings and a bit more steering heft, I have to report that it carried the Sharan across the ineffable border between “sloppy mess” and “I can work with this.” On the descent from the Sella Pass in Northern Italy, where the photos for this review were taken, I had the most fun I’ve ever had in a minivan… well, with my clothes on, anyway. It was subtle, push-by-degrees fun, but at least everything felt like it was working together. Not half bad for a minivan.

But this unexpected revelation held the key to my main impression of the Sharan: all of my favorite things about it are optional. From the giant panorama roof that blessed the cabin with an airy feel and made Dolomite-gawking a dream, to the superb navi system (complete with speed limits), from the sport mode to the third row, and from the excellent headlights to the classy upholstery, all of our Sharan’s many delightful touches come at a cost (with the glaring exception of its high-quality six-speed manual transmission). And the Sharan itself is no cheap thing even without these options: our mid-trim Comfortline Bluemotion with manual transmission started at €33,875, and my attempts to recreate our test vehicle using VW Germany’s online configurator (no Monroney label was provided) show that our tester was essentially a €50,000 vehicle. Even with an Audi badge, a $50,000 pricetag would make this Sharan a non-starter in the US market.

To be perfectly frank, I was hoping to prove that this Sharan could be offered in the US, and that VW’s decision to rebadge a Chrysler was cynical and unnecessary (interestingly, the VW employees who picked up and dropped off the Sharan had no idea that the Routan exists). Certainly I think a minivan of the Sharan’s size could carve out a segment in the US market, but it’s clear that the fine interior, diesel drivetrain and tech-laden equipment levels that European families are willing to pay for would doom our tester in the value-oriented stateside market. That’s a pity, as this Sharan served as a stark contrast to VW’s recent embrace of American-style value, and as a reminder of the positioning that once made VW so popular with American connoisseurs.

Volkswagen provided the vehicle, insurance and one tank of (expensive) diesel for this review.

I never was a New Beetle kind of guy. But then I am a guy. Unless a cute car handles like a Miata, I’m not interested. For 2012 Volkswagen has redesigned the New Beetle, dropping the “New” and the bud vase (every review must mention this) in the process of attempting to broaden the car’s appeal. And?

The new (not New) Beetle’s body is less far-out styling exercise, more faithful yet also better resolved and altogether more attractive update of the form-follows-function original. Except dimensionally, where a page has been ripped from Harley Earl’s decidedly contra-Bauhaus “longer, lower, wider” car design philosophy, with changes of +7.3 (to 168.4), -0.5 (to 58.5), and +2.3 (to 71.2) inches, respectively. Most notable among the now bent curves, the Beetle’s roof no longer traces a continuous arch from fender to fender. There’s enough of a flat roof surface for a much larger glass panel, but not enough for this panel to open even halfway. Disregard the brochure: “panoramic” it’s not. Paint the bug “autobahn appliance silver” and shoe it with wide, low profile treads (235/45HR18s, to be precise), and only men least sure of their manliness should feel uncomfortable driving this car.

The interior is similarly less style for its own sake and more a blend of the original’s minimalist aesthetic and today’s standard VW issue. Though the herringbone pattern in some of the off-black leatherette and the audio display graphics are kind of nifty, those seeking cheery, bubbly fun are much less likely to find it here. The potential for whimsy largely departed with the bud vase. Fans of functionality will adore the extra glove box and three-dial HVAC controls, though.

When I spoke of men being comfortable in this car, I was speaking figuratively. The hard, flat front seat put my seat to sleep, while the hard flat door-mounted armrest made my elbow wish for the same. The view forward is more confidence inspiring than that in the previous car, since the 2012’s windshield is much more upright and you no longer have to gaze across a vast expanse of instrument panel to see through it. But unless you’re especially long of torso it’s first necessary to crank the seat way up to avoid feeling trapped, Kafka-style, in the big bug body. Only the windows seem small. The new car arguably comes by its high belt and small windows honestly, as postwar Beetles weren’t exactly fishbowls. But the large feel from the driver’s seat? That’s new. No such novelty in back—it’s still a tight fit for adults, though the rear glass thankfully isn’t overhead. Cargo volume similarly remains in modest supply, though the hatch opening, no longer a fashion victim, is usefully larger.

I’m oddly fond of the much-maligned low-revving 2.5-liter inline five-cylinder engine in its latest 170 horsepower, 177 pound-feet iteration. Very torquey, it pulls strongly up to 40 miles-per-hour or so, and then more than adequately up to highway speeds, while sounding more substantial than a four (if not remotely like an air-cooled boxer) in the process. Too bad the six-speed automatic transmission, in a not terribly successful attempt to earn good EPA numbers (22 city / 29 highway MPG), is more than capable of lugging even this engine. Want to shift for yourself? You’ll save $1,100 with the five-speed manual. Or spend more and get the 200-horsepower 2.0T / six-speed stick combo.

Hopefully the steering and suspension are tuned differently with the turbo. The 2.5’s hydraulic power steering (vs. electric-assist with the 2.0T) communicates well as loads build, but feels sluggish and a touch sloppy on-center. Little happens during the initial quarter turn. The chassis feels stable but not at all agile. As with the second-gen Scion xB, the oversized feel of the 2012 Beetle really takes a toll. Frisky personality like that of a MINI or 500? Not at all. You could be behind the wheel of any 3,000-plus-pound German driving appliance. The car is all business.

Aesthetically, the 18-inch wheels are perfect for the car. Since those big shiny discs are hubcaps, the rims probably aren’t as hefty as they look. But they do feel as hefty as they look, pounding across all but the most minor road imperfections. Though the suspension tuning is hardly GTI athletic, the ride is jittery more often than not. Chassis refinement is uncharacteristically lacking for a VW. What were the engineers aiming for? To put a positive spin on it, those seeking sharp handling and those seeking a smooth ride will be equally satisfied.

The price of the bespoke body? Easy to figure, since the new Beetle is essentially the latest North American Jetta underneath. Okay, maybe not so easy, as the Jetta 2.5 isn’t offered with the 400-watt Fender audio system or 18-inch rims. The tested Beetle, loaded up with automatic, sunroof, and nav, lists for $25,965. A Jetta without the aforementioned bits but with enough other things to be worth a $680 feature-based price adjustment (according to TrueDelta’s car price comparison tool): $25,065. So figure about $1,580 for the bug body, larger rims, and rocking audio system. Not bad if the rest was good. A similarly equipped (but 121 horsepower) MINI Cooper costs nearly the same as the tested Beetle after adjusting for feature differences.

German coachbuilder Gunter Artz once highly modified a few Golf bodies to fit over Porsche 928 mechanicals. Driving the result must have affected severe cognitive dissonance. The same is the case, if in a less desirable direction, with the 2012 Beetle. Even butched up, it looks like it should be fun, or at least feel somehow special. Perhaps like a less mini MINI. Instead the latest Beetle drives like an American-spec Jetta with gangsta windows, sloppier steering, and less polished suspension. I actually enjoyed driving the Jetta mit 2.5 more. The Germans have never understood our American fondness for the car that, for them, can only have painful association with their immediate postwar condition. This might explain why, after masterfully crafting a more functional, more attractive, and more broadly appealing update of the iconic exterior, they phoned the rest in. The result certainly isn’t a bad car, but also isn’t the distinctive experience it could have been. The abandoned better idea: Think Small.

Volkswagen provided the car with insurance and a tank of gas.

Michael Karesh operates TrueDelta.com, an online provider of car reliability and real-world fuel economy information.

Thirteen years after the Mercedes-Benz SLK reintroduced the hard top convertible, the novelty has once again begun to wear off in the face of concerns about cost, complexity, and curb weight. Even high-end manufacturers like Audi, BMW, and Jaguar have fit their latest convertibles with soft tops (albeit multi-layered ones to retain heat and keep out noise). In other words, the retractable hard top has not rendered ye olde ragtop obsolete. This isn’t to say that the retractable hard top is pointless, at least not when innovatively executed. The recently updated Volkswagen Eos remains the best. But would you want one?

The Eos’s exterior styling remains consistent with the VW brand. Meaning it’s much more clean and functional than drop-dead gorgeous. The revised, de-chromed nose is more generic, but an improvement nonetheless. The top’s novel configuration avoids the poorly located side rail seams that mar the appearance of the otherwise more stylish Volvo C70. Inside, the Eos is similarly very VW, with an instrument panel similar to other compact Euro-market VWs. So clean and solidly-constructed, but nothing flashy or notably luxurious.

As in a number of other VWs and Audis, the driver’s seat is firm and supportive, but is not especially comfortable despite the inclusion of a four-way power lumbar adjustment. You’ll find a far better seat in a Volvo. Visibility is pretty good in all directions. The rear seat is just roomy enough for the average adult male to side behind another such male. If either person is six-plus-feet-tall, though, the fit is going to be tight.

The top is truly the big story. If you’re not interested in it, then you’re not interested in the Eos. VW’s key innovation: separating the center panel from the side rails. This enables a number of unique advantages:

1. A superior exterior appearance when the top is up, as noted above. The separated side rails can stow to each side of the rear seat, so they can be longer than a one-piece center panel could be.
2. An extra-wide rail-to-rail fully functional glass sunroof within the retractable hard top. So you can get some light in the car even with the roof up. Or, to get a little air in the car without fully opening the roof, vent or open the sunroof.
3. A compact retracted roof, in sharp contrast to the much simpler roof of the late, unlamented Pontiac G6 hard top convertible. Even with the top down there’s enough room in the trunk for my usual weekly grocery run. With the top up, trunk space expands from 6.6 to 10.5 cubic feet. And there’s a pass-through to the rear seat for long objects in either configuration.

You simply cannot buy any other car with a roof this versatile. VW even includes a standard wind blocker that covers the rear seat to enable comfortable top-down driving on cool days, and that easily fits in the trunk when not in use.

Of course, the roof also has downsides. The first: with so many motorized pieces, it’s extremely complex. While my sons were highly entertained by the top’s “transformer” effect when in transition, the reliability survey conductor in me must wonder how durable this mechanism will be, and how much it would cost to fix if it did break. Even with the nearly new tested car the top proved finicky. On cold mornings it visibly shook and audibly creaked while traversing patchy pavement. (To keep the seals supple, regularly apply Krytox GPL lube, which runs $50 for two ounces.) Get the trunk’s cargo separator just a bit out of place, and the top won’t go down. Other times the windows wouldn’t move up or down in response to my initial request. And once the windows started rapidly going up and down a fraction of an inch, as they do whenever a front door is opened.

The second downside: curb weight. Tipping the scales just north of 3,500 pounds, the Eos is over 400 pounds heavier than a GTI. So VW’s ubiquitous 200-horsepower 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine feels a bit soft off the line and more laggy at middling speeds. Unlike some these days, you can tell it’s a turbo. Once boost is up, though, the 2.0T moves the Eos forward more than well enough given the car’s typical cruising mission. You don’t have to rev the engine, given its plump midrange. If you want to do so anyway, the mandatory ultra-quick-shifting DSG dual-clutch automated manual transmission is eager to assist. Manual mode works via the lever; there are no shift paddles.

The extra curb weight appears to have cut two-to-three MPG from the Eos’s rated fuel economy, 22/30 vs. 24/33 for the GTI. In suburban driving the trip computer reported from 23 to 26, depending on my driving style. Not bad numbers for a four-seat turbocharged convertible.

In casual driving the Eos feels taut, sporty, almost agile, and much more enjoyable than a Chrysler 200 (the only other hard top four-seat convertible with a price in the mid-thirties). The VW’s steering provides little feedback, but it’s quick and nicely weighted. Drive the Eos as you might a GTI, though, and it lapses into a clumsy plow as its higher center of gravity (especially with the top up) and extra pounds overwhelm the capabilities of the suspension and 235/45HR17 Goodyear Eagle LS tires. The tires do contribute to a generally smooth, quiet ride.

The final downside of the complicated top: price. At $34,765 in its base trim with no options, the Eos lists for $6,950 more than a GTI with DSG and the Sunroof and Convenience Package. Aside from the retractable hard top, the feature level is very similar (according to TrueDelta’s Car Price Comparison Tool), so you’re paying about seven large for the top (in addition to the cost of a sunroof, which is included in the GTI as configured). Not that you’ll do better elsewhere. A Chrysler 200 Limited hard top convertible costs about the same, while a Volvo C70 lists for $6,000 more.

The Volkwagen Eos doesn’t handle like a sports car, or even like a hot hatch. Its styling doesn’t suggest otherwise. But some people are merely seeking a solid, sensible, livable car with a versatile roof that lets them enjoy the sun and fresh air to the maximum extent the weather permits. For this mission, the Eos serves best.

Volkswagen provided the vehicle, insurance and one tank of gas for this review.

Michael Karesh operates TrueDelta, an online source of automotive pricing and reliability data.

Exterior styling doesn’t appear to have been a primary consideration with the original Touareg. Quite likely, the engineers developed a body structure then tossed it over the wall to design, which then dressed it as much as possible like other VWs. The various curves and bulges fit together awkwardly, especially around the ends. With the 2011, the exterior is much the same—the typical car buyer probably cannot tell the two apart—but with subtle tweaks that eliminate the earlier awkwardness without adding anything eye-catching or distinctive. As noted in my review of the Q5, the Touareg strongly resembles both the half-size-smaller Audi and the closely-related Porsche Cayenne.

In the retreat from Stuttgart, Volkswagen decontented the interiors of its cars. The new Touareg’s interior doesn’t induce shock and awe like the original’s did (“This is a VW?!”), but remains a cut or two above the others in the showroom. As with the exterior, the new design is cleaner, perhaps to a fault. Though curb weight is down nearly 400 pounds (to a still hefty 4,700) the Touareg retains a tight, solid feel that even the best domestic SUVs (e.g. the new Jeep Grand Cherokee) can’t quite match.

The Germans haven’t yet gotten the memo that Americans want more car-like SUVs (as suggested by the rise of crossovers). So the Touareg’s driving position remains much the same following the redesign, with a high seat behind a large, relatively upright windshield. The leatherette seat itself is a touch mushy and largely devoid of lateral support—both surprises in a VW. Creating some distance from the Porsche? The rear seat slides and reclines. Slide it back and there’s a decent amount of legroom—but no more than in the 14-inch-shorter, 1,100-pound-lighter Tiguan. The two-speed transfer case no longer crosses the Atlantic, but the Touareg’s packaging efficiency remains that of a conventional SUV. To give credit where due, the Touareg’s cabin is a couple inches wider than the Tiguan’s, and it can hold considerably more cargo (70.9 vs. 56.1 cubic feet), with much of the difference behind the second row seat.

The original Touareg’s V8 gas and V10 diesel engines didn’t survive the change in mission. In their places we now get a 333-horsepower supercharged V6 hybrid and a 225-horsepower V6 diesel. But I sampled the third, relatively boring engine choice, the 280-horsepower 3.6-liter narrow-angle VR6, which like the others is now mated to an eight-speed automatic. Aided by the additional ratios and reduced poundage, this engine feels strong once underway (the initial movement from a dead stop won’t snap any necks). The transmission sometimes seems indecisive, but perhaps it was still learning my driving style. The EPA ratings of 16/23 are typical of a midsize SUV. Require better numbers? Then VW has the hybrid (20/24) or the diesel (19/28) for you. Or the Tiguan (21/27).

Unlike every other U.S.-market VW, the Touareg is not based on a front-wheel-drive platform. Instead, the engine and transmission are located much as they are in any given truck, for a 53/47 weight distribution and a more balanced feel than you’ll find in a car-based crossover. Body motions are very well controlled for an SUV, and the ride is generally smooth and quiet, with just a little clomping over tar strips to remind you of its national origin. A height-adjustable air suspension is no longer offered, but won’t be missed as long as you remain on the pavement. And yet, despite the Porsche tie, “fun” is a stretch. The steering is quick, perhaps a little too quick, with some twitchiness at highway speeds, but it’s not communicative. And, let’s face it, this is a tall, heavy vehicle with little in the way of sporting pretensions. The Touareg feels smaller and lighter than it is, but not to a sufficient degree to call the laws of physics into question.

The new Touareg might not aspire to the same heights the original did, but VW has been cutting prices. Well, not in this case. The 2011 I drove, a base trim V6 with only a couple of minor options—the cheap one—listed for $46,005, about $2,800 more than a comparable 2010. This is the price with no leather, no wood, and no sunroof (but with standard nav and xenon headlights). For 2012 nav became optional to enable a  $1,475 price cut. Add it back and you’re $545 over the 2011.Such pricing pits the Touareg against some heady competition. The vehicle that started it all, the Mercedes-Benz ML350, has just entered its third generation. To similarly equip a Touareg you need the $5,880 Lux Package (not on the tested vehicle), which bumps the tab to just under fifty. A comparably-equipped Mercedes lists for $7,400 more. Use TrueDelta’s car price comparison tool to adjust for remaining feature differences and compare the two invoice-to-invoice (often a better indicator of what you’ll actually pay), and the gap shrinks to about $4,300. Perhaps you’d rather think of the Touareg as a Cayenne without the Porsche price? The latter will set you back about $8,500 more if you go easy on the options, perhaps $13,000 more otherwise.

The Touareg’s toughest challenge might come from the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which received a substantial upgrade for 2011. Equipped similarly to the tested Touareg, the Jeep runs about $7,800 less before adjusting for feature differences, about $8,700 less afterwards. Until it gets its own eight-speed automatic, the Jeep feels sluggish compared to the VW, and even afterwards (2013?) it should continue to feel heavier and cushier. So it’s not a direct substitute. But the Jeep has its own strengths, and $8,700 is a sizable chunk of change.

The Volkswagen Touareg is certainly a solid, thoroughly competent vehicle, but its construction and consequent price continue to reflect Piech’s “beat Mercedes” ambitions of a decade ago rather than his “beat Toyota” ambitions of today. The Phaeton large luxury sedan is long gone from these shores, but its companion SUV has survived into a second generation. To have the interior ambiance reflect the price tag, you’ve got to spend another $5,880, at which point you’re uncomfortably close to $50,000 and the all-new Mercedes. Rather have a diesel? Then the price difference is cut in half and is hardly worth thinking about. So, how many people would rather have a VW than a Mercedes? Apparently about 500 a month. Odds of a third-generation $50,000+ Touareg in 2018?

Vehicle provided by Dan Kelley, Suburban VW in Farmington Hills, MI, 248-741-7903

Michael Karesh operates TrueDelta.com, an online source of car reliability and pricing information.

After a mere six decades of testing the waters, Volkswagen decided to get serious about the American car market. For the second time. To avoid a repeat of the Westmoreland debacle, this time they’ve designed a pair of sedans specifically for American tastes. They’re also building the larger of the two, intended to lure Americans away from their Camcords, in an entirely new, non-unionized American plant. And so, with the new 2012 Volkwagen Passat, tested here in V6 SE form (earlier, briefer drives sampled the other two engines), we learn what Americans really want—as seen through a German company’s eyes.

#1 – We have the aesthetic sense of retired engineers

The new Passat is very cleanly styled, and none of its aesthetic elements can be faulted. But the whole could not be more conservative. Put another way, many American car enthusiasts find the exterior boring. But perhaps their Camcord-driving parents will love it?

The tested silver car was shod with the base SE’s 17-inch wheels. The Passat looks both more expensive and sportier with the available five-spoke 18s (more on these later). Darker colors bump up the elegance.

#2 – Good materials and warm colors are wasted on us

When I learned that Chrysler would be supplying Volkswagen with a version of its iconic minivan, I wondered how they could possibly upgrade its notoriously cheap interior to VW standards. Fast forward three years, and Chrysler has substantially upgraded its interior materials. They also banished light gray—which makes all but the best materials look cheap—from their interior color palette. All of the budget-grade light gray plastic discarded by Chrysler has found a new home in the 2012 Passat, judging from the tested car. VW emphasizes the soft materials used on the tops of the instrument and door panels, but you’re more likely to touch the hard stuff lower down. The Passat’s interior is as plainly styled as its exterior, with right angles and flat surfaces. The problem with flat surfaces: they directly present more area to the eye, so hard plastic looks like what it is. Luckily, beige and black are also available. Hard plastic tends to look best in the latter. Prefer warmer, even bright colors, or at least colorful accents? The Passat isn’t your sort of car.

How cheap is the interior? Not as cheap as that in the new Jetta, but the analog clock would gather dust in a dollar store. Memo to Volkswagen: the entire point of an analog clock is to make an interior seem more upscale. Automotive news recently reported that “VW markets leatherette as a premium feature and the material’s texture might fool some Passat riders.” The author must have taken VW’s word for it, as the texture and feel of the gray vinyl in the tested car won’t fool anyone. It’s the sort of vinyl that turned Americans off of vinyl. Unless they’re the sort of Americans who preserve their furniture beneath clear plastic, for whom the Passat’s fleet-ready easy-clean interior might well be a dream come true. One positive note: the door pulls feel solid.

#3 – We like big cars with scads of room, especially legroom and trunk room

The American Passat is bigger than the European Passat, which is an updated version of the previous global Passat. Compared to the 2010 Passat, the 2012 is 3.4 inches longer (191.6), half an inch wider (72.2), and half an inch taller (58.5). Still not quite as large as the super-sized Honda Accord (194.1×72.7×58.1) and Mazda6 (193.7×72.4×57.9), but at least as large as anything else in the segment. Of course, what really counts are the interior dimensions, and here the new Passat truly shines. Through masterful packaging the interior encompasses limo-like legroom, 42.4 inches up front and 39.1 in back, for a total of 81.5, meaningfully more than in the Honda Accord (79.7) and Hyundai Sonata (80.1). Better, the Passat’s cabin feels even roomier than its dimensions suggest. Credit the straight-edged interior styling that, as in the 2012 Camry, maximizes perceived space. The Hyundai Sonata, with a swoopier interior, feels much tighter (if also sportier) from the driver’s seat.

The trunk extends forward virtually forever even before the rear seats are folded. Unlike many these days, it’s also very regularly shaped. Don’t swap in a full-sized spare and there’s more space beneath the floor. Inside the car, there are plenty of usefully large storage areas. Unlike in many current luxury cars, my superzoom camera fit in both the glove compartment and the center console.

#4 – We’re so delighted by some unexpected electrical bits that we’ll overlook the curious absence of others

VW might have nickle-and-dimed the interior materials, but they spent freely on light bulbs and minor electrical bits. Even the cheapest Passat has turn signal repeaters in the mirrors, puddle lights, a curb light in each of the wide-opening doors, comprehensive red switch backlighting, and dual-zone automatic climate control. All four windows have auto-down and auto-up. A power lock button that operates all four doors is present in each of them—even the two in back. (Great fun for the grandkids.)

Curiously MIA even in the top-of-the-range SEL Premium: separate front and rear height adjustments for the driver seat (raising the seat also tilts it forward) and rear air vents. The former are common among competitors, and it’s a mystery how VW figured the Passat would be fine without them. And the latter—why provide a huge rear seat if the people back there are going to bake?

#5 – We don’t like to gaze across acres of instrument panel, but otherwise have little need to see the outside world

The Passat’s staid exterior makes for good sightlines from the driver’s seat. The A-pillars are relatively thin and upright, and the instrument panel (abetted by a bi-level upper surface) appears compact by contemporary standards.

With this, VW decided they’d done enough to aid visibility. Even with the high beams on, the halogen headlights cast a narrow beam at night, and xenons are not available. With the body tall and high-waisted in the current idiom, rearward objects (still breathing and otherwise) can be obstructed by the high trunk, but neither obstacle detection nor a rearview camera is offered.

#6 – We like flat, hard seat bottoms and well-bolstered seatbacks

Okay, maybe not. No explanation for this one except that you can’t entirely remove German tastes from a German car. Where’s the pillow-top velour option?

#7 – There’s no replacement for displacement

No turbo Benzinmotor here, but the available V6 packs 219 cubes (3.6 liters for Americans who’ve learned some metric) and is good for 280 horsepower when wound to 6,200 rpm, the most you’ll find among direct competitors. Not the smoothest or the quietest six, with substantial engine noise at both idle and once over 3,000 rpm. But traditional American V8s also expressed their pleasure when subjected to a heavy right foot. And VW’s six uses its extra ration of gasoline (EPA ratings of 20/28 vs. the Sonata 2.0T’s 22/34) to produce much more sporting noises. Do a pair of front-mounted 215/55HR17 ContiProContact tires struggle to transfer this much power to the pavement at low speeds? You bet. But…

#8 – We like spinning our tires

The new Passat V6 continues a fine American tradition of cars with far more torque than traction. But wait…you can’t actually buy a Passat like the (pilot production) tested car, with both the V6 and the 17-inch tires. At a dealer you’ll only find V6 Passats with 235/45HR18 Bridgestone Turanza EL400s (and a sunroof also absent from the tested car). Still not a performance tire, and still no match for the V6’s 258 foot-pounds of torque channeled slush-free through the DSG, but nearly an inch wider and so a little grippier.

All-wheel-drive would help, but is no longer available.

#9 – We like lightning-fast shifts

Okay, probably not a priority among the Camcord set. But if you’ve got the next big thing in transmissions, flaunt it. The five-cylinder base engine is paired with an automatic, but the others get VW’s famed “DSG” dual-clutch automated manual. With the V6 shifts are virtually instantaneous and, except for some barely perceptible bumping about at low speeds, generally smooth. Those seeking to extract the full potential from the powerful six can use paddles on the steering wheel or the lever to manually shift the transmission. Or just stick the lever in S, in which case the transmission will keep the engine continually on boil (consequently this isn’t a viable option for typical driving). What the Camcord set won’t like about the DSG: $350+ fluid changes every 40,000 miles (just beyond the 36,000 miles of free maintenance).

#10A – We like to feel (and hear) the road

In the late 1980s, Toyota intensively studied the U.S. market and concluded that we get our kicks from super-smooth, super-quiet cars. Either times have changed, or VW used a different methodology, or they chucked the survey results in this case and did what they wanted to do (see #6). Whatever the reason, on concrete you’ll experience Honda levels of road noise and on the highway you’ll experience a similar abundance of wind noise.

Personally, I love a detailed read of the road through the seat of my pants, and consequently enjoyed my week in the Passat more than I would have a week in a Camcord. Instead of a smoother, more insulated ride, I wished for a nose that didn’t retain a bit of float and bobble (a partial concession to American tastes?) and the conventional steering offered only with the five-cylinder engine. Compared to the electric-assist system in the TDI and V6, which starts talking only under duress, the 2.5’s conventional system provides much more nuanced feedback and makes the car feel smaller, lighter, and more agile. But the Americans the new Passat is styled and sized for? Their taste in cars tends to differ greatly from mine.

Or perhaps VW’s research found…

#10B – We’re going to play the audio system loud anyway, and when we do we enjoy our bass at 11, even when it’s not

Five years ago VW partnered with Fender, legendary American manufacturer of guitars and guitar amps, to include a free GarageMaster with every car. Perhaps realizing that few of the Camcord owners they hope to lure away aspire to become six-string samurai, for the new Passat (and the new Jetta as well) VW had Fender help develop (or at least put their name on) an audio system manufactured by Panasonic. The 400-watt system can certainly kick out the volume, with an extra helping of thrumming guitar-amp-style bass even with the slide centered. Even with songs that you weren’t previously aware had much bass. Prefer a more balanced sound, similar to the default position in other systems? Simply use the touchscreen to move the slide to the left a click or three.

Or, perhaps as a result…

#10C – We’re deaf

#11 – We can be suckered by a low starting price

VW successfully captured Americans’ attention by starting the Jetta just below $15,000, and clearly hopes for repeat by starting the Passat below $20,000. But these prices are before $770 destination, and without the popular third pedal delete option. The least expensive automatic Passat lists for $23,460. The least expensive with a V6: $29,765. (Add nav like in the tested car: $31,365.) In defense of the $20,000 car, a Passat with the 2.5-liter five-cylinder engine, its attendant conventional steering and lighter curb weight, and the manual transmission should be the most engaging of the bunch. Not a bad way to go for enthusiasts with two big kids and a small budget.

Take the wayback machine to 2007, the last year VW last offered a Passat with a V6 but without leather, and you’ll find a $30,820 sticker. Adjust for the 2012′s additional features using TrueDelta’s car price comparison tool, and the new car’s price advantage widens to about $2,400 (but only about $1,400 comparing invoices, dealer margins have been squeezed). So the new car is less expensive even when comparably equipped, just not nearly to the degree suggested by the $7,180 base price drop.

A Honda Accord EX V6 lists for $28,050. Even after adjusting for the Passat’s additional standard features it undercuts the Passat by about $400 at MSRP, and nearly $2,000 invoice-to-invoice. Willing to trade two cylinders for a turbo? The Hyundai Sonata SE 2.0T lists for only $25,405. The feature adjustment is only a few hundred in this case, leaving the Korean competitor with an over $4,000 price advantage.

#12 – We’re ready to forgive and forget VW’s past reliability lapses

Unfortunately, it remains to be seen how reliable the new Passat will be, and how soon Americans will be ready to accept that VW has changed (assuming it has). Based on responses to TrueDelta’s Car Reliability Survey, the new Jetta is about average so far, not bad for an all-new car. But the cars are still young.

At the end of the week, I wondered about some of VW’s choices with the new Passat, yet remained intrigued by the car’s combination of qualities: plain styling, lots of room, lots of power, an engaging chassis (if less engaging steering), value-grade interior materials, and limited refinement. If VW was trying to develop a twenty-first century interpretation of the groundbreaking 1977 Chevrolet Caprice (or the Ford Crown Vic that aped it) with the “cop suspensions,” this is about where they’d end up. With the TDI the Passat would make a great cab. With the V6 it would make a great cop car. Ed was in town for a few days while I had the car. His riff on VW’s current tagline: “Das Impala.” Coincidentally (or not), the current Honda Accord is quite similar. Did VW simply riff off the Japanese? Or do both the Germans and the Japanese know us better than we know ourselves?

Volkswagen provided the vehicle, insurance and one tank of gas for this review.

Michael Karesh operates TrueDelta, an online source of automotive pricing and reliability data.

The difference between “bold” and “foolhardy” is not always apparent at first glance. While I was driving the GLI around Volkswagen’s Virginia test loop (insert standard narrative devices here: 11/10ths, drive like the wind, straining the limits of machine and man, et cetera) I saw a tall, lithe young woman by the side of the road. She was holding a dog and chatting with a rather fearsome-looking fellow in an old Toyota truck. Without thinking too much, I whipped the Jetta around at the next driveway and returned to the couple. Flashing my hotel room card very quickly and identifying myself as “Jonny Lieberman of Motor Trend magazine”, I convinced the girl to pose with the Jetta. This was intended to be a sort of homage to AutoSpies founder Donald Buffamanti’s habit of photographing all available women, and it was particularly amusing given the very rural circumstances.

At the time, however, there was a very real chance that the fellow in the Toyota would simply step out and maul me like a crazed bear working its way through a deer carcass. I never found out what his relationship to the young woman was — husband? father? cello teacher? dog trainer? — but he didn’t care for me one bit. In retrospect, that little impromptu photo shoot was less “bold” and more “foolhardy”.

The same fine line applies to “forthright” and “contrarian”. After driving the Beetle Turbo, Golf R, and Golf GTI, I steered two examples of Volkswagen’s new Jetta GLI down the same route. Why two Jettas, when I’d driven one each of the other cars? Two reasons: I wanted to try the DSG and the six-speed manual back-to-back, and I wanted to be sure. My drive of the DSG-equipped Jetta GLI suggested to me that it was a better, more enjoyable car than the GTI, but I knew that this “forthright” opinion would come off as “contrarian” to many of TTAC’s readers. After driving the standard-shift GLI, I was sure.

Will you, the reader, be as easily convinced as I was?

Once each year, the Italian fashion house of Ermenegildo Zegna holds a competition for Australian sheep. The award-winning sheep are shorn and their wool becomes Zegna’s “Trofeo” fabric. Rare, expensive, and possessed of an ethereal tactile quality, Trofeo is a true delight to touch and wear. As I dragged my aging carcass under the Jetta to photograph the revised rear suspension, grinding a one-of-a-kind green plaid Trofeo sportcoat into the hot Virginia tarmac, I wondered why I was the only person I’d seen do this all day. After all the pissing and moaning about the base Jetta’s twist-beam rear suspension, surely this would be the photo that everyone wanted? Guess not. I’m not likely to ever step through the revolving door between automotive PR and “journalism”, but if I had VW PR guy Mark Gillies’ job, I would have moved heaven and earth to put twist beams under the test GLIs just so I could chuckle over the “brilliant multi-link suspension” reviews afterwards. Kind of like the time two Chicago-area journos tested a Mustang and raved about how the “Track Pack” completely changed the character of the car. Oops! Turns out that their Mustang tester didn’t have the Track Pack. Oh well. Everybody still got paid.

Why waste time looking at suspension when we can offer caustic opinions on the revised interior? Speaking personally, I couldn’t tell much difference between this and the GTI. Don’t take my word for it, however, since not even the worst Volkswagen dealer in the world (an honor I would personally give to Checkered Flag VW in Virginia, the place which apparently ran a Brillo pad over my 2006 Phaeton and curbed the wheels before delivering it to me) is going to keep you from sitting in one. Check it out yourself. As in the GTI, the controls are mostly logical and accessible. It seems nice enough, particularly for the money. Speaking of: Twenty-five grand will get you all the GLI you need.

The GLI’s mission, stated or unstated, has always been “provide Americans with the most affordable sporting German (or German-brand) sedan available” and the styling continues to reflect this. The changes are just enough to let people who care about this sort of thing know that you’re driving the sporty Jetta and not the base model.

Just how sporty is it? If you read my GTI review yesterday, you know that the GLI’s hatchback cousin is quite sporty indeed, and deserving of superlatives. It seemed like it would be a tough contender to beat on the backroads — and yet the GLI manages to do exactly that. How? Why?

We’ll start with the one real black mark on the GLI’s report card (other than the ones Consumer Reports will give it, wink, wink): the button to disable traction control has disappeared. How VW can justify letting Phaeton owners turn DSC off but prevent GLI drivers from doing so is beyond me. This is something the company needs to fix. It’s not that the car needs to have DSC disabled in order to make good time down a backroad. That’s not the case at all. Rather, it’s the simple fact that over the course of a car’s lifetime, there will be times when it’s best to turn a brake-based traction-control system off. Deep snow, nursing a car with a frozen brake caliper or worn-out pads to a service station, and so on. There’s no reason not to have the option available. It’s a fifty-cent button.

Enough griping. I come to praise the GLI, not bury it. Start with the suspension. It’s measurably softer than that of the GTI, but the same excellence in damping is there. If anything, the GLI was even more competent through the “whomp” zone I detailed in the GTI test, controlling the body nicely even though I really jammed it through that secion when driving the manual-transmission car.

Hear me now and believe me later: you want a relatively soft suspension in a road car. Suspension absorbs bumps and controls the body. That’s its purpose. Stiff suspension, particularly suspension that is stiff in “jounce”, decreases the car’s ability to stay in contact with the road. The same goes for roll stiffness. A little of it is nice, because we don’t want to heel over so far that the car won’t steer correctly, but in general we want the car to comply with the road’s demands. Stiff suspension feels fast, but outside a racetrack it’s rarely the quickest way to get anywhere. Just keep the car from hitting the bumpstops or stroking the shocks all the way to their extension point, and leave the rest to me.

Some TTAC readers theorized that the GLI would be lighter than the GTI. VW’s own figures disagree, placing the GLI a few pounds above the four-door GTI and therefore making it heavier than both GTI bodies and the Beetle. (The Golf R is, of course, heaviest of all.) Nor is this shell appreciably stiffer than the GTI. Yes, the GLI is easier to place on the road than the Golfs are, but I would put that down to the intersection of steering geometry, suspension geometry, and wheelbase.

Remember how, in the Beetle test, I complained that the Beetle has the shortest wheelbase and should be the most nimble, but simply isn’t? There’s a reverse effect here at work in the GLI. The steering is lighter than that of the GTI or Beetle, and it’s more willing to be steered. I was faster everywhere in the GLI than I was in the GTI. Some of that was due to increasing familiarity with the road, but at least half of my better pace was because the GLI gives a slightly surer sense of place. It’s not something that I can empirically describe in a road test, but I found myself running a few inches farther out on every corner exit, loading up the steering just a touch more, simply getting more from the GLI than I could from the others.

Driving the manual-transmission Jetta after the DSG model removed my fears that I’d somehow accidentally gotten Puebla’s Best GLI Ever the first time. If anything, the manual car was even more willing to run at the edge of the tire. As with the Golf R, there’s a frustrating refusal to “blip” the revs when heel-and-toeing. I eventually learned to actually use my heel to kick the accelerator almost to the carpet. Problem solved, albeit inelegantly. Were I to buy a GLI, I would pick the manual for simplicity and fun, although the DSG is certainly faster in almost all circumstances.

This is a good car, and although we live in an era of good cars, this one deserves your attention and consideration. As much as I enjoyed the GTI, I simply enjoyed the GLI more. It has nothing to do with the trunk, or the value, or the interior quality, or any of the other canards raised when we discuss the current-generation Jetta. This very subjective test boils to down the fact that, had VW given me time to drive the route yet again, I would have chosen another GLI over another GTI. It’s a greater pleasure to drive, and since driving pleasure is the whole reason to spend the extra money for the red-trim Volkswagens, I think it’s the winner. If that seems contrarian, I apologize. It’s like to think that it’s “forthright”, or perhaps even that most reassuring of words: “truthful”.

Everybody agrees that the Volkswagen GTI is a great car. Except for the US-market MkI, which was underpowered. And the Mk2, which was really underpowered. Don’t the forget the Mk2 16V, which was wayyy overpriced and over-complicated. And the MkIII, which had no business calling itself a GTI, not with that chunky VR6 under the hood and the super-soft factory suspension. The Mk4? I heard it was a bit of a wallowing pig, and everything fell off it. That Mk5 seemed to be a hell of a car, except it was down on power compared to everything else in the segment and it had a large magnet in the front bumper which inexorably dragged it to the nearest VW service department.

If I understand the conventional wisdom, the only GTI which everyone seems to like is the original round-light German-market MkI GTI. And since almost nobody in North America has driven one, it’s possible they are just fooling themselves.

When exactly was the GTI great, anyway?

Five minutes in this MkVI GTI will show you the answer to that question, so come along with me as I enter the fast portion of VW’s Virginia press loop. This is from memory, not from video, so I apologize if I leave anything out.

We’ll start with a 150-degree off-camber right-hander. Too hot! The GTI plows for a moment until we remove all brake input and let the outside edge of the tire catch. Now it’s full-throttle along a long sweeping downhill left-hander. The end of the turn is blind but keep your foot in it. At the bottom of the hill there’s an odd dip that completely upset the Beetle and caused the Golf R to compute ferociously as the four driven wheels argued amongst themselves.

The GTI, on the other hand, just doesn’t care. Whomp down just before the bumpstops. This feels like a world-class shock tune, the steering stays straight, and we stay compressed up a short, steep, full-throttle hill before cresting and heading downhill right, then left. Rebound damping is outstanding, so much so that I want to find the people who engineered the CTS-V and make them drive THIS Volkswagen on THIS route. Turns out you can beat computer shocks with plain ones…

…except these are computer shocks, too, as this GTI has some kind of three-way adjustment and I have it set to “Sport”. We’ll make a mental note to drive one without the fancy stuff. (Note: This is the result of me misreading my post-drive notes. The Golf R had the adjustable shocks, the GTI and GLI did not. However, I’m not a fan of post-release editing so I am leaving the mistake in. – JB)

Speaking of fancy stuff, note that the DSG has been flawless so far, holding the right gear when needed and seamlessly helping the engine along despite just being left in “S”. Why waste time paddling the wheel shifters when the transmission is so smart on its own? The exhaust note is multi-dimensional and it stutters almost like a boxer engine before blipping, F1-style, into the next gear without a whiff of flywheel effect. It may be one of the first dual-clutch transmissions, but it’s still perhaps the most appealing one.

Now we have a series of fast switchbacks down a hill. The guys from Bigtime Magazine who were tailgating us on the state highway a few minutes ago aren’t even visible in the mirror. This is an excellent place to try going flat in third, and we’re on the way to doing it ARRRGGGHHH THERE IS AN ELDERLY WOMAN PLANTING FLOWERS BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD well the brakes, honestly, could stand a little more pad area or a more aggressive compound. The calipers from the Golf R would be nice to have.

Now there’s some soft, heat-related travel in the left pedal but it doesn’t matter. Stomp the ABS a bit for a sharp 120-degree left. Too hot again. Would be nice to have just a slightly more aggressive tire on this thing. Unless we make a change here we will hit a mailbox at about fifty mph, so brush the brake left-footed and roootate just a touch. The computer allows for a second or so of left-foot braking before entering Sudden Acceleration Mode and cutting spark/fuel/whatever. That’s nice to have, and remember that the real advantage of DSG isn’t the shift speed but rather the ability to balance the car on both pedals.

Now we have a long straight followed by a wide-radius blind right-hander and sharper left-hander running beneath an overpass. In the R and Beetle this wasn’t really flat-out, but in the GTI you can hold your throttle/breath/nuts all the way to a late entry of the second turn. Doing so requires that you grind the outside tire to the squealing semi-limit very close to gravel. There’s plenty of feedback through the steering, and the level of effort involved is an accurate reflection of the number of small stones beneath the tread block closest to the shoulder. It inspires confidence. We could pick up 1 or 2 mph next time.

Now it’s time to hustle up and down a narrow road before hanging it out for a third-gear downhill leftie. All the way down, the GTI responds to mild throttle adjustments by pointing the nose in or out just a touch. If we get a bit ham-handed with the wheel, the DSC light will come on but it’s not inclined to get involved until we do.

The Golf R didn’t really feel fast enough on this road, since the binary stop/turn/go technique demanded by its weight and drivetrain showed up the engine’s deficiencies. The GTI, on the other hand, is more than fast enough. If anything, it’s brakes that we need back here; the 2.0T can push the little car just a bit faster than it can stop. On a racetrack, the problem would be even more pronounced.

Take a look around the interior. It’s standard VW fare, available with a few extras if you so desire. The cloth seats are, to many people, an indispensible part of the GTI experience, but some people will insist on leather. Your humble author is not qualified to judge the minute distinctions between different Volkswagen plastics the way that many Euro-fans are. I had two Phaetons and compared to them the GTI sucks. I also had a 1990 Fox, and compared to that it seems quite nice. In between, I had a 2000 Golf GLS 1.8T four-door, which I bought for invoice and sold with 23,000 miles for a grand under invoice, and that seems about the same as the GTI, interior-wise. So there you go.

Let’s return to the drive. The GTI can do what the Beetle and Golf R can’t. It can make you want to go faster. It can involve you. It can be steered, braked, and accelerated in a linear, predictable, but still joyful fashion. The controls are properly weighted, the rest of the car doesn’t distract from the mission, and it feels like a high-quality piece. These cars are no longer exactly cheap, but they are a good value.

Most importantly, the obvious speed gap between this GTI and some of the competition doesn’t matter so much when the experience of driving the car is so delightful. Yes, a Mazdaspeed 3 is faster; no, I wouldn’t dream of buying an MS3 instead. It would be nice if the GTI were five hundred pounds lighter, but we live in a world where something like that simply isn’t going to happen. No time soon, anyway.

If the GTI is so wonderful — and it is, it truly is — why doesn’t it win first place in the Intramural League? The obvious answer is that the GLI ended up being more satisfying for me, and we will discuss the reasons for it in the final article. In the meantime, however, at least we have the answer to “When, exactly, was the GTI so great?” That answer is: Right now.

This article is dedicated to my friend Kathy, a fast and furious little Mk5 GTI street racer from Houston who fearlessly reaches for top gear on downtown freeways and then reads Ross Bentley in bed, or so I’m told, anyway.

Anybody here ever go to Catholic school? I sure as hell did. About six of them over the course of seven years. I learned really quickly how to distinguish the nuns who scolded from the nuns who slapped, paddled, or punched. (Sister Andrea! What’s up?) I also learned that kids rarely attend Catholic school alone. They have brothers. Sometimes they have big brothers. I remember one family — the Szolozsis — who had nine sons. Nine sons. If I’d been Papa Szolozsi, I’d have bought a lottery ticket. Anyway, I went to school with the third-youngest. Anybody who beat that kid up had to face the bigger brothers one a time until he either took a beating or whipped ‘em all. Alternately, he could get his bigger brothers involved. Happened all the time, this escalation of big brothers. High school sophomores would knock each other unconscious over fights that had started a week before in second grade, while the two second-graders, who were now best friends forever once more, would dispassionately observe the proceedings.

Since the WRX arrived in American parking lots, ditches, and tirewalls a decade ago, followed by its bigger brother STi and the brother’s rival Lancer Evolution, fans of Volkswagen’s GTI have been put in the position of a the wimpy grade-school kid hoping his European bigger brother would arrive to set things straight. The original R32 turned out to be the kind of reasonable, cultured sibling who would rather talk things out than fight. “Look, I have this wonderful leather interior. Do we have to settle this on the dragstrip?” The second-generation R32 was kind of like having a big brother from the special-needs classes; all the mean kids pointed and laughed whenever he showed up.

Welcome the newest big brother. No more messing around with six-cylinder refinement and nose-heavy dynamics. The new Golf R packs a spec sheet straight out of Japan: cranked-up two-liter turbo, six-speed manual, all-wheel drive. Tell the STi we’ll meet him next to the incinerator at lunch…

…where we will proceed to receive a vicious ass-kicking of the first degree. Forget any hopes you had of this admittedly very aggressive and impressive Golf beating an STi down a dragstrip, around a racetrack, or through an autocross course. It’s not going to happen. It’s down on power, very likely up on weight, and every control available to the driver feels like it’s been dipped in molasses. Those of you hoping that the Fatherland would use this Golf R to finally assert supremacy over the disposable speed machines from two of America’s shadiest dealer bodies can stop reading now.

What? You’re still here? Okay, we can talk about why the Golf R gets third place in our Intramural League. It’s easy to explain why it beats the Beetle: it’s faster and more capable without being any less fun to drive. Fair enough? At this rate, this review could end so quickly I’ll have time for a completely misguided “styling analysis”. Unfortunately for me, I now have to explain to you why the Golf R falls behind the other two contenders, the GLI and GTI. This will be a little tougher to accomplish.

What is a Golf R? Glad you asked. It’s a Golf with a 256-horsepower variant of the 2.0T which failed to impress in our Beetle Turbo review. Unfortunately, that engine comes bolted-up to Volkswagen’s make-do AWD system. A few years ago, I dinged the Audi TT-S for having too much weight and too much drivetrain for the 2.0T to shine. In the heavier Golf, that problem is compounded even further. While I am certain that somebody, somewhere, will turn a 13.9 quarter-mile in this thing somehow, in my test drive it felt nothing more than sluggish, and barely any quicker than the Beetle.

Our test car was a Euro-spec Golf R, which supposedly has 265 horsepower compared to the US model’s 256. You’re unlikely to notice the difference, if it actually exists. What you do notice from the first minute you drive the car is the absurdly tall gearing. First gear is WAYYY too high (numerically low), making getting under way a dicey proposition. I observed a pair of girljournos stall it five times in a row trying to leave the lunch area at the press event. I never stalled the R, but I sure as hell had time to contemplate the eternal mysteries of the world while trying to do a 5-60 roll.

Second and third gear are marginally better, so that’s good news: if you are prepared to stay above 45mph at all times during your backroad drive, you’ll be fine. Torque steer is nonexistent, for two reasons. Reason one: an improved AWD system keeps the rear wheels driven at all times, thus preventing the torque-steer-then-shift-drive-to-the-back-axles that happens in most transverse-engined FWD systems including, say, the Flex Ecoboost. I mention the Flex Ecoboost because if you own a Golf R you’d better steer clear of that thing. From a dig you’ll get smoked. Reason two, of course, is that the engine isn’t really strong enough to produce torque steer. As often happens with big-boost versions of low-boost engines, the flexibility seen in the regular 2.0 is totally abandoned for the purpose of producing a power number that matches the Mitsubishi Evolution.

The 1994 Mitsubishi Evolution.

Want some good news? The interior is an exceptionally pleasant place in which to spend those long drives down the dragstrip. The seats are great, the stereo should be outstanding, and everything you can touch feels relatively expensive. Even the steering feels expensive, and deliberately so. This is accomplished, as far as I can tell, by modulating the power assistance in such a way as to create a very odd feel. It’s still obviously assisted, it just isn’t assisted much, and the effort is evened-out no matter what you’re doing with the car. I race a small car without power steering. It’s much lighter around dead center than this Golf’s steering is. Quite odd. Perhaps it has something to do with damping out the steering oscillations induced by an active AWD system.

Down the backroad portion of my test loop, I struggled to make any serious time. Not because the car couldn’t handle it, but it simply didn’t feel interested in going quickly. It wasn’t always obvious what was going on with the front end, and the gearing simply couldn’t work with the engine to provide reliable thrust. Luckily the brakes, which look to have been borrowed from an A6 or Phaeton, were uber-reliable despite having Sliding Caliper Disease. That’s how you drive a Golf R. Late brake, middling corner speed, stand on the gas almost immediately and wait for the boost to climb the gearing hill. The whole experience ended up being very point-and-shoot. This is fine for the average “I experienced understeer at 38mph” journosaur, but your humble author was frustrated beyond all reason. The current Evo and STi aren’t as great as their 2008-era predecessors, but either one handily outclasses this Volkswagen.

The alert VW fanboy has already stopped reading this review to run to his forum and write

lolz baruth failz again… he is 2 stupid 2 realeyes that the golfr is a EUROPAEN DRIVING MACHINE AND LUXURY compeating with the DRYER THREE SEREIS and the MB C63 AMG… i hate this guy and his pheatons… i will totally buy a golf r in eight years when they are cheap used and i finally get that job at best buy

Yes, Mr. LAMBODRIVER69, I understand that the Golf R was never intended to compete heads-up with the STi and Evolution. The problem is that here in the United States, that’s all it gets to compete against. A Mustang GT will rip its windshield off and dump oil on its seats. A BMW 328i goes just as fast, maybe faster, and is likely to cost less. Perhaps the people who choose a Golf R will never consider the Japanese cars. That’s a shame, because the Japanese cars are worth considering, to say nothing of the aforementioned Mustang.

The bottom line: This big brother won’t fight when you need him to, so don’t bother. As we will find out in the second half of this comparison test, however, the kids are alright on their own.

On Wednesday, your humble author had the opportunity to drive several of the newest Volkswagens on an identical 14-mile loop around rural Virginia. By adding a few unauthorized extensions to this loop, I was able to walk away from the day with a reasonable understanding of a few different VW models. Naturally, the four most interesting cars were the turbocharged compacts:

• 2012 Beetle Turbo
• 2012 Jetta GLI (tested in both DSG and manual form)
• 2012 Golf GTI
• Golf R (tested in Euro-market six-speed form)

None of these cars can be said to compete directly against each other, but I’ve decided to create an impromptu comparison test between the four. The ranking is solely my opinion and is not the result of collaboration, voting, free long-term bribes testers or an utterly inexcusable blurring of the already thin line between editorial and paid content Special Advertising Section placement.

The podium positions will be revealed on Monday through Wednesday, but there’s a loser in every group, and today we are meeting that loser: the charming but ultimately outclassed 2012 Beetle Turbo.

In the comments for yesterday’s Beetle 2.5 review, more than a few TTAC readers mentioned that they liked the “mini-911″ or “Audi-TT-esque” looks of the new car. Volkswagen isn’t shy about playing up that Porsche/Audi connection; just look at the Seventies “BEETLE” sticker laid along the rocker panel of the silver car at the top of said review. A “turbo” script which either mocks or pays tribute to the old 911 Turbo decklid badge is available as well.

The Turbo model starts at $23,395 for the six-speed manual model. Our tester was that base-ish car plus DSG, listing for $24,495. With all the goodies — nav, sunroof, leather interior, bi-xenons — you can break the $30K barrier pretty easily. That kind of money would almost put you into a five-liter Mustang. Trust me: if you’re at the stoplight in any Beetle Turbo and a five-point-oh rolls up next to you, hit your turn signal and pretend you don’t see the other guy.

Did I say “five-liter Mustang”? I meant “V-6 Mustang”. The 2.0T FSI engine, which debuted in the Mk V GTI, continues more or less unaltered in this car. Allow me to give you a short list of forced-induction two-something-liters with more power than this Beetle:

• Kia Optima Turbo
• Hyundai Sonata Turbo
• Hyundai Genesis Koop 2.0T
• every Japanese rally-rep to arrive on these shores, with the exception of the Mazda 323 GTX
• Acura RDX
• The old Cobalt SS
• The even older Cobalt SS Supercharged
• Saturn Ion Redline
• 2003 Dodge Neon SRT-4
• That new BMW turbo four, if anybody cares
• The 1991 Dodge Spirit R/T, which was basically a K-car made from recycled plastic bottles
• Pretty much every other engine in the world

Get the idea? Is it any wonder the Beetle isn’t fast at all? About the most one can say about the Beetle Turbo is that it can run with traffic pretty well, as long as that traffic isn’t filled with V-6 Camrys bent on proving a point. Among sporting forced-induction small cars, only the MINI Cooper S is less impressive, producing a normally-aspirated Hyundai Elantra’s worth of power from its turbo 1.6.

Not that your Beetle Turbo buyer will be focused on raw speed. Rather, it will be the organic driving experience that pulls her in. Here’s the good news: on fast back roads, the Turbo inspires plenty of confidence. The limits are relatively high and there’s no bad behavior when you try to look for them. Volkswagen’s DSG transmission, as always, is an utter revelation when attacking a narrow, twisty one-and-a-half-lane. Cinch up your seatbelt, put your left foot on the brake pedal, and screw your courage to the sticking-place, as Lady Macbeth would say.

Believe me, you will see results. The old Beetle 1.8T couldn’t rock and roll like this one. The visibility was wonky, the driving position felt unnatural, and the chassis couldn’t really keep the wheels in check at all times. This one is improved by a factor of ten. Don’t get the impression that the new Turbo is some kind of novelty joke. It’s perfectly competent at hauling ass, within the limits of its relatively poky powerplant.

Unfortunately, “competent” is as far as you get. The biggest issue is the monster wheel syndrome that affects so many modern sporting cars. Never for a moment is it possible to forget the boat anchors attached to all four corners of the Turbo. They take effort to steer, accelerate, and stop. (Brake fade, by the way, shows up early, even on the street.) This is the skidpad-g-number school of handling. I bet it kicks all sorts of ass on a long, sharply curved freeway ramp.

Get it off the ramp and into some fast left-right transitions, however, and the Beetle just can’t muster up any desire. The steering feels slow and the ultimate grip available isn’t well-telegraphed back through the wheel. It’s easy to fall behind the road and start having to play catch-up, which only makes the unhurried response from the helm that much more frustrating.

As the second-lightest 2.0T Mk VI (the two-door GTI is listed at 3080lbs to the Beetle’s 3089), with the shortest wheelbase, this Turbo should be the fast-road superstar in the group. Instead, it’s the least enthusiastic of them all. What’s going on? I suspect that VW specifically tuned the steering and suspension to be less aggressive than that of the GTI. Just a little deliberate preservation of the boundaries, you see. There can’t be any other reason.

I wouldn’t expect anybody to be terribly discouraged from Beetle-buying intentions by this review. Nor should they be. The 2012 Beetle is cute inside and out, it’s a genuine improvement over its predecessor, and if you really need to hustle, it will be your partner, albeit a diffident one. It’s very far from being a bad car, but in this company, it is a no-brainer fourth place.

“I mean, this car is dead, right? The only people who bought the last one were fifty-year old Sally Schoolteachers, and they’re all sixty years old now. There’s no volume in this car. Can’t be any volume. The buyers are almost dead. And it isn’t fun to drive AT ALL. What would you rather have, this or a MINI?” The fellow shooting the rapid-fire queries at me from the passenger seat as I drove a five-cylinder 2012 Beetle through Northern Virginia was one of those authentic American types: the Straight-Shooting Self-Styled Marketing Expert. I encounter a lot of S-S,S-SME’s on press trips, and most of them are also Self-Deluded Fools. Not this guy. He was smart, he was articulate, and I didn’t have any easy answers to his questions.

The 2012 Beetle is (much) wider and (fractionally) lower. The new styling is intended to appeal to male buyers as well as the aforementioned Sally Schoolteacher. Dynamically and functionally, it’s a massive step past its predecessor. If you liked the old New Beetle, you’ll probably really like this one. The question still remains, however: who’s going to buy one? And why?

If ever there was a company that liked to hold on to its old platforms and/or designs, it’s Volkswagen. Forget the fact that the original Type I was built in one form or another from 1938 to 2003. Forget the Mk 1 Golf that was still being produced in Africa nearly thirty years after its German debut. Forget the Chinese Mk 2 Jettas that are still being sold. The New Beetle itself was sold for over thirteen years. It was the first “A4″ Volkswagen to hit these shores and the last to leave, sold in showrooms side-by-side with the “A6″ Jetta.

As a Mark Four A-platform (VWVortex.com members non-ironically pronounce it “Emm Kay Eye Vee” in conversation) the New Beetle was blessed and cursed by that type’s virtues and shortcomings. The interiors were fabulous but short-lived, the styling was delightful but forced some unfortunate compromises on seating position and interior visibility, and a veritable cavalcade of mechanical parts were likely to commit suicide and/or detach themselves from the car during any ownership experience lasting more than a week. Let’s not forget the optional 1.8t five-valve turbo four-cylinder, which was originally designed to have just over three quarts of oil in the pan. Owners of that particular model soon learned that it was necessary to walk back into their VW dealer’s service bay and personally supervise the oil change, because the dealers couldn’t be bothered to remember how much oil any of their cars took. Otherwise, the engines wouldn’t even make it to their first unexpected ignition coil pack failure.

The Mk IV Volkswagens were the Amy Winehouses of German-brand whips: sassy, sweet, devastatingly competent at times, occasionally sexy, and ultimately self-destructive. VW knows that an entire generation of buyers were burned out of their socks by those cars, and as a result your humble author was forced to sit and listen to an hour-long harangue by the company’s bigwigs regarding all the wonderful things that have been done to make Volkswagens the highest-quality cars money can buy. At one point, somebody had the nerve to mention AutoPacific ratings.

It was a relief to escape the briefing and meet the Beetle in the metal. For the record, I like the new styling from the front and sides, but the back somehow manages to look generic, particularly at a distance. The optional “heritage” alloy wheels, which have a massive polished cap and evoke the original VW dog-dish upgrade hubcaps, are splendid. The various Beetles I drove didn’t attract much attention on the road from anyone besides the occasional guy in a lowered Emm Kay Ivv. Even current Beetle owners didn’t look twice. This may be a good thing; it certainly hasn’t hurt MINI to have the second-generation “new” car look almost identical to its predecessor.

Inside, it’s a different story. As you can see in the photos, the painted plastic-pretending-to-be-metal panels are extremely convincing. I would have liked to see the steering-wheel spokes be real metal, because fingers, like Shakira’s hips, don’t lie when it comes to distinguishing metal from plastic. It calls the rest of the illusion into doubt. Regardless, this is an extremely pleasant interior. With the big sunroof shade rolled back, the sun literally pours into the car, the cheerful colored trim “pops”, and the sense of well-being is almost overwhelming.

The seating position itself is enough of a reason for New Beetle owners to trade in their current cars. The original “Concept 1″, which became the New Beetle, was draped over the Polo platform. Stretching it over a Golf created a rather odd seat/dashboard/windshield relationship. Driving the original New Beetle is a lot like driving a GM “dustbuster” minivan. The dash stretches to the horizon in a horrifying monotony of slowly degrading soft-touch plastics. It’s very far from optimal, to put it mildly, and it’s completely fixed in the New New Beetle That Is Just Called Beetle Now. A steeper windshield, shorter dash, and repositioned seat make the Beetle completely normal to drive. There’s no mental adjustment required when moving from a Golf to a Beetle or vice versa.

Our test 2.5 has the six-speed automatic, which is a torque-converter conventional transmission and NOT a DSG. That’s a good thing in my book; if Volkswagen has a proven driveline in its current inventory, it is probably this rather prosaic 170-horse five-cylinder and the slushbox. Shift points have been lowered for improved EPA ratings, so it’s not uncommon to look down and find the Beetle loafing along at 1100 rpm on the road. This is not a car for people in a hurry.

Nor is the suspension a willing accomplice for back-road stupidity. The Beetle Turbo, which will be the subject of a separate review later in the week, ain’t bad when it’s time to hustle. The plain Beetle has no such ability. It is pleasant to drive and no more. Only Corolla drivers will find it “sporty”. MINI drivers, as my friend suggested, will think they’ve gotten into a Town Car.

VW’s announced pricing is reasonable, starting at $18,995. The base MINI is fractionally more expensive, but the price gap widens as the order form gains checked boxes. Some of the fun Beetle options: a “Kaferbach” double glovebox as seen above, bi-Xenons with a cute rounded LED strip, and a big sunroof which should be considered mandatory for anyone really looking to enjoy their Beetle experience.

Who’s going to buy this car? I couldn’t tell you. It seems unlikely that men will flock to the Beetle. The original New Beetle customers, as previously alluded, are not going to provide a lot of volume. The nostalgic appeal has probably been more or less burned out by thirteen years of an occasionally troublesome predecessor. It’s a shame, really, because this is the car the New Beetle should have been years ago. It’s competent, enjoyable, pleasant, cute. It hits all the targets. You may not see a lot of them on the road, but I won’t quibble with anybody who decides to put one in her — excuse me, his or her — driveway.

In SEL Premium trim the new Passat exterior is slightly more attractive, thanks to one-inch-larger, more stylish wheels and an extra helping of chrome accents (as recommended by Maximum Bob). The latter and the car’s conservative shape team especially well with dark colors, including the tested car’s black paint.

Inside the Passat SEL Premium, the SE’s extensive faux metal trim is replaced by equally plentiful faux wood and its leatherette seating surfaces are replaced by a combination of leather and synthetic suede. The budget grade leather is hardly more convincing than the “wood.” I thought it was leatherette until I happened to notice on the window sticker “leather trimmed comfort sport seats” (which, though large and firm, are too lacking in contour to excel at either comfort or sport). It doesn’t help that light beige like that inside the tested car makes all but the best materials look cheap. Though the materials inside a Ford Fusion or Toyota Camry are little if any better, in the mid-thirties you can find some much nicer cabins. A key advantage shared with all 2012 Passats: an exceptional amount of legroom in both rows. Unfortunately, even in the SEL Premium the climate control knobs feel cheap and a storage tray occupies the space where rear air vents should be, so on hot days that expansive rear seat won’t be so comfortable. Another victim of cost-cutting: still no separate front and rear height adjustments on the power front seats, to adjust tilt independently of height, and still no height adjustment for the lumbar bulge.

The 400-watt Fender audio system deserves special mention. The bass was initially so overpowering and muddy that I assumed someone must have set it to 11. Then I tapped my way through the pages of the touchscreen control panel to discover that it was centered. For the first time ever I had to take an audio system’s bass down a few clicks to balance out its sound.

The 2.0-liter turbodiesel is good for 140 horsepower at 4,000 rpm (30 fewer but 1,700 lower, respectively, than the 2.5-liter gas engine) and 236 foot-pounds of torque at 1,500 rpm (59 more and 2,750 lower). As the specs suggest, the diesel feels especially strong off the line and at low speeds. Over 30 miles-per-hour or so the gas engine is quicker, but the diesel remains easily adequate and even at highway speeds does not feel sluggish. The TDI’s sound is clearly that of a diesel, especially when idling, but is much quieter and less clattery than the oil burners of decades past. The six-speed dual-clutch automated manual (DSG in VW parlance) behaves very similarly to the six-speed conventional automatic in the 2.5. Whether creeping along without a foot on the gas or shifting at full throttle it’s smooth. I attempted to trip it up, and failed. The DSG’s shifts are quicker than the conventional automatic’s, but when paired with the inherently slow-revving diesel this is of limited benefit.

When paired with the TDI, the DSG primarily benefits fuel economy by eliminating the fluid coupling of a torque converter. The EPA ratings of 30/40 are quite good for a large sedan. The trip computer reported even better numbers: high 30s in typical suburban driving and low 50s while cruising at 70. My suspicion: it lies.

Compared to the Passat 2.5 SE, the TDI SEL Premium rides more smoothly, handles with less agility, and generally feels like a larger, heavier, and more relaxed car. More competitive in some regards, but also less engaging. Frankly, I was startled by the difference between the two. My initial assumption: the TDI has much more weight in its nose, which can be expected to dull the steering, reduce agility, and settle the front ends tendency to bob a bit in the 2.5. Checking the spec sheet, the TDI does weigh nearly 180 pounds more, and the uplevel trim with its power passenger seat and sunroof probably adds another 70. But even 3,470 pounds isn’t heavy for such a large car. The tires might deserve some of the credit / blame, as the TDI SEL Premium’s wheels are shod with 235/45HR18 Bridgstone Turanza EL400 touring tires instead of the narrower ContiProContacts fitted to all trim levels of the 2.5. The Bridgestones grip the road a little better, but this is probably thanks to their greater width, as their design prioritizes ride over handling. It’s also possible that the TDI has additional sound insulation, to counteract its louder engine.

Still, it seemed unlikely that even all of these factors together could explain the difference in how the two cars felt through the steering wheel. Then, glancing over a photo of the TDI’s window sticker while writing this review I noticed “electric power steering.” Hmmmm…the system in the 2.5 felt too communicative to be electrically-assisted. The system in the TDI, not so much. Pull up the photo of the 2.5’s sticker, and my newfound hypothesis is confirmed: it retains “hydraulic power steering.” So if you were hoping to combine the refreshingly direct steering feel reported in the Passat 2.5 review with the efficiency of the TDI, too bad. Can’t get this combo. And the 280-horsepower V6, which system does it include? Unclear—vw.com says electric in some places, hydraulic in others. Most signs point towards electric. Hopefully they have this sorted out in the Chattanooga assembly plant.

Compared to the Passat’s other two engines, the TDI costs $2,300 more than the 2.5 and $755 less than the V6. Until someone else finally follows through and offers an affordable midsize sedan with a diesel engine in the United States (Honda, Nissan, and Subaru have all announced then canceled such plans), VW has this space to itself. This leaves midsize hybrid sedans as the Passat TDI’s closest competitors. A comparably-equipped 2011 Toyota Camry Hybrid lists for $460 more—but about $1,000 less if you compare the two invoice-to-invoice (Toyota dealers enjoy much fatter margins). Adjusting for feature differences using TrueDelta’s car price comparison tool and both shift about $900 in the VW’s favor. So with a feature-adjusted invoice-to-invoice comparison they’re very close. A loaded 2011 Ford Fusion Hybrid lists for about $500 more, but invoice-to-invoice it’s about $1,000 less. The feature adjustment goes $500 in the Ford’s favor. A 2011 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid with Premium Package checks in the lowest: about $1,300 less than the Passat TDI SEL Premium at MSRP and $1,900 less invoice-to-invoice. Feature differences between the two are a wash.

The Passat TDI SEL Premium looks and feels like a more expensive car than the 2.5 SE, but might nevertheless struggle to support its mid-thirties price tag. Even with the upgraded interior many of the cheap bits remain, and the rear seat, though very roomy, doesn’t get its own air vents. The TDI-DSG powertrain performs well and gets exceptional fuel economy given the size of the car. But the ride, though quieter and smoother than that in the SE, is still average at best. Most disappointing: the steering system that made the 2.5 SE fun and engaging on a curvy road isn’t included in the TDI. Instead, the TDI’s electric power steering cuts off communication with the front wheels and makes the car feel much larger and heavier. (In the EPS’s defense, this is partly because the TDI SEL Premium is about 250 pounds heavier.) Bottom line: if you’re seeking a roomy, highly efficient midsize sedan, the Passat TDI compares well against others’ hybrids and is priced similarly. But it’s not the stellar car it could be with a few minor upgrades and alterations.

Vehicle provided by Dan Kelley, Suburban VW in Farmington Hills, MI, 248-741-7903

Michael Karesh operates TrueDelta, an online source of automotive pricing and reliability data.

Volkswagen intends to become the world’s largest auto maker. Selling far more cars in the United States would accomplish this goal. Euro-spec cars haven’t been doing the trick, as too few Americans have been willing to pay the resulting semi-premium prices. So VW engineered a new Jetta compact sedan and a new Passat midsize sedan specifically for American tastes and budgets. Confident of the latter’s success, they’ve even constructed an all-new factory in Chattanooga, TN, to assemble it. Should the UAW’s latest targets expect to be working overtime? Today’s review evaluates the 2.5-liter five-cylinder gas Passat in SE trim, while Wednesday’s will compare the 2.0-liter turbodiesel in SEL Premium trim.

Apparently VW felt they were biting off enough risk with the new plant and the much higher sales volume needed to justify it, for the new Passat’s exterior styling could not be more safe. From the side the big sedan resembles the first-generation Toyota Avalon, itself tailored to the most conservative slice of the American car market circa 1994. The front end, like that of the new Jetta, does without the sort of overstyled, oversized headlights and grilles that have been fashionable for the past half-decade. But it goes too far in the other direction, giving the otherwise handsome (in dark colors) exterior an overly generic, “value” face not unlike that of the 1997 Camry.

The new Passat’s interior styling is similarly conservative to a fault. The instrument panel upper and parts of the doors are soft to the touch, but because many of the other surfaces and controls are composed of decidedly lower-grade materials the overall ambiance reeks of cost cutting. The climate control knobs, though easy to understand, feel especially chintzy. As in other recent VWs, the beltline (base of the windows) is fashionably high. But the pillars are thin by current standards and the windshield is comfortably raked, so the driving position is good if not commanding. The seats don’t have much in the way of contour, and the typical American posterior will find them short on padding. Compared to recent VW practice, the power seat lacks two adjustments: no tilt and no height adjustment for the lumbar bulge. For some people none of this will matter, for the new Passat’s interior has one literally large competitive advantage: limo-worthy legroom. Headroom is also plentiful. If you’ve been having trouble finding a sufficiently roomy sedan, your search is over—unless you also want your rear passengers to be well-ventilated. Though dual zone automatic climate control is standard in all 2012 Passats, rear air vents aren’t available. There’s plenty of room for your stuff as well, as the truck is large and the rear seat folds to expand it. VW clearly thinks Americans care about quantity more than quality, even as Ford and Chevrolet make a big shift in the opposite direction.

The 200-horsepower 2.0-liter turbocharged four that powered the previous Passat costs too much for the new car’s lower price point. Instead, the 170-horspower five-cylinder engine initially created for the U.S.-market 2005.5 Jetta lurks beneath the hood of the Passat 2.5. While most definitely not the driving enthusiast’s choice (we want whatever Europe gets), the five excels at midrange torque and sounds more substantial than the typical four. Paired with a six-speed automatic it has no trouble getting the car off the line or accelerating up to highway speeds. It helps that the new 191.6-inch-long, 72.2-inch-wide sedan weighs only 3,220 pounds, over 100 fewer than the smaller, 188.2-by-71.7-inch 2006-2010 Passat. The new Audi A6, though only a little larger on the outside and less roomy on the inside, weighs nearly a quarter-ton more.

The trip computer reported mid-twenties in suburban driving and high 30s along a stretch of 70 MPH highway. Both numbers seem optimistic. The EPA ratings for the Passat 2.5 automatic: 22 city, 31 highway, same as the 2010 2.0T.

Stripping the Passat down to fighting weight also pays dividends for handling. The Passat 2.5 feels much smaller than it actually is. The chassis and especially the steering have a direct, honest feel lacking in today’s cars, with their relentless pursuit of Lexus. Feedback is plentiful and nuanced when it’s most needed, in curves. The steering is a little light on center, but progressively firms up as the wheel is turned (many current systems with too much new tech for their own good do the opposite). As a result, though the Passat 2.5’s limits are fairly low courtesy of unaggressive suspension tuning and 215/55HR17 ContiProContact tires, and front end could be better damped in bumpy curves, it’s easy and enjoyable to exploit every bit of the car’s potential.

Then, the flipside. Without the extensive use of budget-busting lightweight steel and aluminum, those missing pounds had to come out of the body structure and sound insulation. Perhaps for this reason, the new Passat sounds and feels insubstantial and unrefined compared to the emerging norm for the class. Mid-turn bumps elicited a clunk from the driver’s door. Even assuming a defect with the tested car, the body structure feels less than rigid across imperfect pavement. Build quality, noise levels, and refinement are those of a mid-pack car from a decade ago. Thought a modestly insulated driving experience was disappearing forever from the midsize sedan segment, for good and not so good? Think again. Slicker, quieter, more solid competitors sound and feel more expensive, a reversal of the situation when the 1998 Passat shook up the industry.

The 2012 Passat starts at an attention-getting $19,995—but the mandatory $770 destination charge bumps it well over the magic $20,000 mark. Opt for the $1,100 automatic transmission and the SE package (17-inch alloy wheels, heated leatherette power driver’s seat, leather-wrapped steering wheel, trip computer, satellite radio, and a few other niceties), and the sticker jumps to $25,595. No longer so attention-getting, but still $2,350 less than the 2010 Passat (there was no 2011). But the 2010 included more stuff, most notably a standard sunroof, foglights, and those no longer available power seat adjustments. Adjust for these using TrueDelta’s car price comparison tool and the MSRP difference shrinks to only $750. Compare invoices and the feature-adjusted difference is less than $200—VW has cut dealer margins. So VW isn’t giving much away here. They’ve increased the size of the car, but downgraded materials and removed content, resulting in a wash (at best). Even with its lower price, the 2012 Passat still lists for $3,390 more than a Hyundai Sonata GLS with Popular Equipment Package. Adjusting for feature differences cuts the difference to a still sizable $2,900. The Koreans are admittedly outliers. Other competitors tend to be within $1,500 of the Passat once feature differences are adjusted for.

Don’t care for upscale materials or insulation from the outside world? Just want a roomy car at a competitive price? Then VW has developed a Passat for you. But as much as I like to feel the road, the Passat sacrifices too much refinement in pursuit of a low price and a low curb weight. The best current cars suggest that, with finesse, it is possible to have both driver involvement and passenger comfort. The new Passat needs more such finesse. But, if strong sales of the new Jetta are any indication, it’ll sell well regardless.

Vehicle provided by Dan Kelley, Suburban VW in Farmington Hills, MI, 248-741-7903

Michael Karesh operates TrueDelta, an online source of car reliability and pricing information.

As I noted in an earlier piece on the macro-level issues with EVs, it’s dangerously misleading to assume that electric cars can simply replace internal combustion-engine vehicles without a basic re-think of nearly every way in which we relate to our cars. That’s true in terms of consumer-end issues like refueling grid impacts and “range anxiety” but it’s also true in terms of manufacturer-end issues like development and differentiation. It’s even true for the auto media.

One of the giant re-thinks spawned by EV development is in how manufacturers make their vehicles reflect their brand values and stand out in the marketplace, as the electric motor in (say) a Ferrari EV wouldn’t be as fundamentally different as an electric motor in (say) a Kia. This, in turn, makes reviewing EVs extremely difficult, as they all display similar power attributes, weight challenges, single-speed transmissions and battery ranges. So when you are asked to drive a pre-production EV from a major manufacturer, the major question in the mind of the conscientious reporter is the same as the question that drove the vehicle’s development: how is this vehicle different than any other EV? In the case of the Golf blue-e-motion, the answer to that question reflects the challenges of developing a major-market electric vehicle.

But before we dive into what makes the Golf blue-e-motion unique, we have some background to get through. Having spent the last decade joining its German brethren in poo-poo-ing EVs and hybrids, Volkswagen has finally decided that it makes sense to develop a pure EV for eventual mass-market sales. And rather than buying into a company like Tesla, as VW’s arch-rival Toyota did, VW set up its own battery research team around Tesla founder and former CEO Martin Eberhard. When I toured VW’s Palo Alto Electronics Research Lab last year, Eberhard’s contribution was already visible in the form of renderings of battery arrays for this Golf blue-e-motion and the Audi e-tron electric sportscars. Just like the battery packs that Eberhard developed at Tesla, the VW systems eschew the expensive prismatic cells used by Nissan’s Leaf and Chevy’s Volt in favor of 18650 cells, the cheapest, most-produced format for lithium-ion cells. Using these cells, argues VW, will make its packs more energy-dense, safer and cheaper than the competition. And to think, they got so much of the 18650 array know-how without even buying into the strategic nightmare that is Tesla!

In the Golf blue-e-motion, 180 of these AA battery-sized 18650 cells are packed into modules, 30 of which are assembled into a pack that occupies the bottom and rear of the car, including the cargo area underfloor, under the rear seats, and in the central tunnel of the Golf’s underbody. With active air/water thermal management, the battery pack weighs nearly 700 lbs, but thanks to a lightweight electric motor and other weight-saving measures, it ends up weighing about 3,400 lbs, just 50 lbs more than Nissan’s Leaf (which does not have active thermal management) and 450 lbs more than a Golf TDI with DSG. And because that weight is all concentrated low and to the center of the car, it carries its weight through the corners with the grace of a much lighter car (as do most EVs).

Volkswagen estimates that the 26.5 kWh battery array can power the Golf to a maximum range of 93 miles, for functionally similar usability as a Nissan Leaf (provided these numbers hold up in testing, we weren’t allowed to test range on our drive).

But, also like most EVs, the Golf blue-e-motion only feels remotely sprightly from a stop, when its zero-RPM max torque twists it from a stop with adequate brio (VW estimates 11.8 seconds for 0-60). Though it offers a lower peak output of 85 kW than the Chevy Volt (with 111 kW) and a slower 06-60 time (by nearly three seconds), it feels remarkably similar in terms of seat-of-the-pants performance in the moderately-trafficked street conditions I saw in our test drive in Wolfsburg. Fun for the first few seconds followed by some building frustration at the single-geared drivetrain (which the Volt mitigates slightly better) is the major impression. All told, the Volt is quicker and possibly a bit more fun to toss in the corners, but the distinction is basically academic as neither car is performance oriented in any meaningful sense.

One strange feature that took some getting used to: the lack of “creep” when you take your foot off the brake. Whereas the Volt eases forward when you let off the brake, just like an automatic-equipped ICE car, the Golf blue-emotion just sits there like it’s in neutral (or using a stop-start-equipped ICE) until you give the throttle a hesitant stab. It doesn’t actively interfere with driving, but with 100 percent of your torque available at 0 RPM, the lack of ease-in might make some American drivers uneasy. Use a steady right foot and you’ll have no problems, and it seems like the kind of issue that one would stop noticing after even a few hours with the car.

Thus far, the Golf’s lack of off-throttle creep is its most distinctive characteristic among EVs. And VW could have simply left the development there, fighting the Leaf on a relatively level field (100 mile range with adequate performance and space) while adding a Volt-style thermal management system (only without the complex ICE component). If the price point were right, that would be a relatively marketable car. But instead, VW felt it had to bring something to the table in hopes of justifying its less-than-entirely-groundbreaking project. The holy grail of EV development is a multi-speed transmission (which nobody has been able to build tough enough to reliably handle an EVs torque output), but that would have been far too complex for VW to include on a production bound vehicle (more on that in a bit). So instead of giving its EV a transmission, VW did the next best thing: allowing  drivers to “shift” the regenerative braking system. Row, row, row your… brakes?

In addition to three “driving profiles” which vary power mapping and AC power use for improved range or power, VW has included no fewer than four regenerative braking modes. Like the Volt, the shift column has both “drive” and “low” settings, the latter of which provides the most extreme engine braking for heavy traffic or slow hill descents. In this mode the off-throttle regeneration is almost neck-snappingly extreme, slowing the car strongly and progressively as soon as you get off the “gas.” In “drive” the Golf blue-e-motion offers three separate modes which are selected not with the shifter, but with DSG-style paddle shifters mounted behind the steering wheel. Two modes offer varying degrees of regeneration, ranging from a gentle slowing to a stronger regeneration but both are less extreme than the “low” setting. Accompanying these two modes is the “sail” mode which allows the Golf to coast in light traffic with no off-throttle regeneration at all.

This is an innovation I’ve been waiting for since I first drove an EV… although in my mind I imagined a separate lever for infinitely-variable regeneration. In practice, however, it does take a little getting used to. Flipping between coast mode for empty roads and light throttle openings and progressively stronger regen modes as traffic built up was a genuine challenge at first. And even as comfort with the “anti-shifting” builds you do get the sneaking suspicion that you’re working awfully hard for relatively small range savings. But then I realized just how similar this Golf was to the other EVs on the market, and that this variable-regen system is one of the more meaningful differentiations available to pure electric driving (and one that Tesla should be listening to customers about). And then something else occurred to me: it’s also fun to be driving an EV that actually engages the driver. Sure, it’s more like the video-game trance you get from a hybrid than the man-machine melding you’d get piloting a manual-transmission sports car on a winding road, but it’s engagement nonetheless. In the era of electric vehicles you take what you can get.

Speaking of taking what you can get, you won’t ever be able to buy this specific car, which will spend the next two years testing in various car-sharing and corporate fleets around Europe. VW’s first EV will be an electric version of the Up! city car which goes on sale in Europe in 2013, but likely won’t be headed to the US. This Golf blue-e-motion will continue to be tested and refined until 2014, when a production version will debut, sporting the next-gen Golf VII looks and underpinnings. So, by mid-to-late 2014, this seemingly competent and ever-so-slightly innovative Golf blue-e-motion could well become the first pure electric Volkswagen sold in the US. Which raises an interesting question: will its incremental innovations still be news by then? With new chemistries in its 18650 cells, the Golf blue-e-motion could well move the game on from the Leaf’s opening position, but in its current form it seems more of an evolutionary half-step. And as far as Volkswagen or I know, EVs could be rocking multi-speed transmissions by the time this comes to market in 2014.

Volkswagen flew the author to Wolfsburg, Germany to drive the vehicle for this review. Over the course of the trip, the author was treated to multiple meals, free lodging, a factory tour, an Autostadt tour and a women’s World Cup soccer game.

The Touareg TDI is not your father’s Oldsmobile. I know, because I unfortunately drove my father’s 85HP, 1983 Cutlass Cierra diesel when I was a kid. Since my dad was a glutton for punishment, this was not his first unreliable GM diesel; we also had a 1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser with the infamous diesel V8. After about 30,000 miles, both our diesels smoked like a 60 year old hooker. Since potential clean diesel shoppers seem to fall into the 30-60 year old demographic, this is still the image that diesel brings to mind for many, not the reliable but low-volume European diesels from the 70s and 80s. If sales numbers are any indication however, BMW Mercedes and VW have been changing the tide of public opinion.

VW has been trying hard to overcome perceptions of diesels for some time with varying tactics. The old V10 TDI in the previous Touareg proved that a diesel could be fast and thirsty, the previous generation Jetta TDI proved diesels can be terribly slow but incredibly efficient. The new Touareg TDI is VW’s latest attempt to prove that 90% of Americans could live with a diesel every day. At 225HP, and 406lb-ft of twist they might just be on to something. For reference this more torque than the 380HP supercharged hybrid Touareg we tested in January SUV making it the “torquiest” Touareg on these shores. (European buyers are able to spec a 4.2L V8 which wins the torque award by a hair.)

The diesel Touareg receives the same high quality interior as the Touareg hybrid we recently reviewed. Dash parts are suitably squishy, panels are aligned with Germanic precision and if it weren’t for the two-letter logo on the steering wheel you’d think you were inside a modern Audi. American shoppers are unable to buy a Touareg on these shores with VW’s “Driver Assistance Pack” which in the Euro-zone contains radar cruise control and a blind spot warning system. This omission seems contrary to the obviously high-class interior and fairly hefty price tag.

Speaking of pricing, our Touareg TDI came with the $9,950 “Executive package” raising our tester to $57,500 from the $47,950 sticker worn by base TDI models. While this may seem a tad spendy, the 2011 Touareg TDI is a far cry in pricing from the last oil-burning SUV VW sold on these shores. One of the ways VW has accomplished this price reduction is by discontenting and bundling options together into packages. The base model is fairly well featured as it stands; the $3,850 “Lux” package adds 19-inch wheels, panoramic sunroof, walnut trim, leather seats with 12-way adjustable driver’s sear and electric rear seat releases. Stepping up to the “Executive package” we tested gets the buyer 20-inch rubber, heated steering wheel, heated rear seats, keyless entry & go, parking sensors and the up-level Dynaudio sound system. All Touareg TDI models regardless of package have the easy-to-use VW RNS 850 navigation system with iPod/USB integration, Bluetooth and Sirius satellite radio.

VW’s latest Navigation uses a bright, high resolution eight-inch color touch-screen display that is easy to read even in direct sunlight. The latest version of VW’s navigation software continues to be touch-driven in contrast to Mercedes’ COMMAND system, BMW’s iDrive and even VAG’s own Audi brand’s MMI. The screen layouts are logical and easy to follow, the 3D mapping is on par with most systems as well. I would prefer such a system to be mounted higher on the dash thereby increasing the ease of use (and lowering distraction) while driving. Compared to BMW’s latest iDrive however the VW system seems less polished. One of the oddities that turned into something of an annoyance during our week was the traffic notification system. It’s great that the Touareg’s telematics system receives traffic information, however unlike most modern systems VW chose not to overlay the map with colored lined to indicate traffic speeds on major highways.

The Touareg TDI uses the same engine as its close cousin the Audi Q7. First released in 2004, this 3.0 liter, 24-valve DOHC powerplant is well known in Europe and found under the hood of vehicles such as the Phaeton, Audi A8, and Porsche Cayenne. With luxury brands using this engine refinement is the name of the game. While I was unable to test cold-winter starts since I live in sunny California, morning temperatures were around 31 degrees the week the TDI slept in my driveway. Unlike diesels we all remember the TDI cranked just like a gasoline engine. On cold mornings I did notice a tiny hint of vibration and clatter when the engine first started, but after a few seconds the engine quiets down to a purr smoother than I thought a diesel was capable of.

Out on the road the 225HP and prodigious torque are more than adequate to get the Touareg moving on a short freeway onramps. Our own 0-60 test executed in 6.97 seconds which is fairly close to what other publications have recorded and significantly faster than VW’s own 0-60 claims. I can only conclude that VW doesn’t want to show up the base Cayenne which is advertised at [an untested] 7.1 seconds to 60 with a professional driver and a manual and 7.4 seconds to 60 for slushbox drivers. Even if Porsche has underrated the stoplight performance of the Cayenne, these are some impressive numbers for an SUV that tips the scales at 4,974lbs as tested. Turbo lag is minimal for a diesel, that is to say it reminds me of driving a 1980s turbo car: the lag is there but it can be a pleasant companion. Probably the biggest reason the 3.0L V6 is so livable is the new 8-speed ZF automatic transmission. The ZF 8HP45 employs close ratios to help keep the engine in its relatively narrow power band (compared to a turbocharged gasoline engine). The resulting feel seems well suited to the diesel engine while the same transmission in the hybrid left me occasionally asking what was wrong with the 6-speed.

Off road, the TDI is (as one would expect), an excellent companion having well suited gear ratios and abundant torque at low speeds for crawling up steep inclines. The problem of course with the Touareg as a true off-road vehicle is the sales demographic in the USA: buyers of the previous go-anywhere SUV thought “anywhere” meant suburban outlet stores instead of the downtown mall. Because of this lack of demand and a desire to keep weight and costs down, all the fun off road bits aren’t sold in the USA. Not only did VW decide to keep the more capable 4xMotion 4WD system with low range a Euro-only option, but the adjustable-height suspension remains off-limits for American Shoppers. US buyers are also treated to a fairly ridiculous looking collapsible spare tire. Still, the factory ground clearance of 7.9-inches and full-time AWD 4Motion system are more than adequate for even a journey on the Rubicon Trail.

With the demise of the old Explorer, and the death of all GM’s GMT360 variants, most mid-size SUVs sold in the US no longer contain the RWD based drivetrains that permit moderate towing capacities around 7,000lbs. If you are searching for a vehicle that is suitable for commuting on weekdays and towing your Eddie Bauer Airstream or horse trailer with two ponies on weekends, a mid-size diesel SUV makes plenty of economic sense. The diesel Touareg is rated to tow a segment leading 7,700lbs which is nothing to sniff at. In comparison: the Mercedes ML350 BlueTEC is rated at 7,200lbs and the BMW X5 xDrive35d is rated at 6,500lbs.

If American metal is more your thing, the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango twins can tow almost as much (7,400lbs) but must be equipped with the thirsty 5.7L V8 to do so. Rounding out the tow-capable SUVs, are the V8 Nissan Pathfinder (7,000lbs) and Lexus GX460 (6,500lbs). Our tester was not equipped with a class three hitch, but my local VW dealer as kind enough to loan me a Touareg TDI properly equipped for some mountain towing fun. 4,000lbs of bricks in a 2,100lb trailer proved no problem for the Touareg’s 406lb-ft of torque. Again making the Touareg the livable to tow is the 8-speed ZF automatic. Anyone who has tried towing a heavy trailer uphill with an old Dodge Ram with the old Cummins engine and 4-speed transmission knows the pain of finally hitting the power band only to have the transmission upshift and leave you back at square one.

Of course any of the competition we mentioned will tow a trailer comparably well, but the Touareg TDI’s advantage is fuel economy. While the new Durango is average for the pack with EPA numbers of 14/20, the Touareg boasts an EPA rating of 19/29 which is a touch higher than the BMW and Mercedes diesel SUV offerings. During out week with the Touareg we averaged 27.7MPG in mixed driving on the first tank, an impressive 30.5MPG on a 160-mile road trip, and 16.5MPG while towing two-tons of bricks. Compared to the base V6 Touareg, this represents a 24% increase in observed fuel economy for a $3,000 premium. Out here on the left coast, the cost of premium to fuel your base Touareg averaged $4.41 on 4/18/2011 and diesel was $4.48 (according to the CA Energy Commission), making the break-even point somewhere around 75,000 miles depending on your driving style.

As our 1050-mile week with the Touareg drew to a close I realized that it had only visited the diesel pump once during the week for an expensive 22-gallon fill-up eking 610 miles out of the first tank. VW has managed to create what GM failed to with the Tahoe Hybrid: An SUV that delivers good mileage with or without a trailer attached that has a bit of off-road cred tossed in (just in case). That being said, the high cost of diesel and the relative uncertainty of what is undeniably still a niche market in America should be a concern for shoppers. Still, if the era of high-fuel prices turns out to be our permanent future, VW’s TDI SUV makes a compelling alternative. If you’re shopping for a Touareg, just walk right past that base V6 model on the floor and give the TDI a try.

Volkswagen provided the test vehicle, insurance and a tank of diesel.

Performance statistics as tested:

0-30: 2.2 seconds

0-60: 6.97 seconds

Average economy: 27.7MPG (observed:30.5MPG Highway)

As a longtime champion of clean-diesel technology in the American market, Volkswagen’s decision to launch its all-new Touareg with a hybrid version comes as something of a surprise. Not only does VW have a stable of proven, efficient oil-burners to choose from, but the firm has, until very recently, savored its role as a skeptic of EV and hybrid drivetrains. And with the GM/Chrysler/BMW/Mercedes Two-Mode hybrid system conclusively failing to build a market for large gas-electric Utes, it seemed that the era of mass-market hybrid SUVs was at an end anyway. So, does VW’s excursion from its comfort zone make more sense on (or off) the road than on paper?

From the outside, the Touareg Hybrid’s most distinctive feature is VW’s latest aggressive corporate grille, which blends well with the standard (on Hybrids only) HID headlamps and LED accent lights. The wide and low stance fools the eye into believing the new Touareg has lost some girth compared to the old model, but it’s all show; the new model has actually gained several inches on the previous Touareg. But despite the increased dimensions, the 2011 Touareg is about 400lbs lighter than the outgoing model. How is this possible? VW calls the weight loss a benefit of the Touareg’s clean-sheet redesign: the subtle evolution of the exterior look hides just how thoroughly new this vehicle is.

Taken as a package, the Touareg is certainly a handsome vehicle, although the exterior still exudes the same “one sausage”  design philosophy that VW is fast becoming infamous for. Inside, on the other hand, the Touareg harkens back to the Phaeton-era Volkswagen that’s rapidly becoming a vanishing memory in this market. Though the interior is not as shockingly beautiful as the original Touareg was when it was released in 2002, it is still a far cry from the new Jetta’s mass-market aspirations. It’s obvious from the tasteful walnut trim to the perfect seams that this SUV was intended to compete with the other German brands on their home turf.

Speaking of the Germans, while GM, Chrysler, BMW and Mercedes were busy dumping over a billion US dollars into their abortive shared two-mode transmission, VW chose to take a different (read: less costly) route to electrification. While the Global Hybrid Two-Mode Hybrid transmission is a technological marvel combining two electric motor/generators and a 4 speed automatic transmission with CVT functionality, the transmission is both complex and expensive. So expensive, in fact, that its being dropped like a hot potato.

Instead of joining the alliance, VW wisely saved some cash and mated a ZF 8-speed transmission with a 46HP/221lb-ft “Hybrid Module” located between the transmission’s torque converter and the 333HP 3.0L supercharged V6 borrowed from the S4 sedan. Combined the system generates 380HP at 5,500RPM and 428lb-ft of torque at only 1,000RPM. While this may sound much like the Honda IMA system or the so-called “mild-hybrid” system shared by BMW and Mercedes on their large sedans, the VW system has some tricks up its sleeve. The innovation inside the 121-pound Hybrid Module is an engine disengagement clutch allowing the Touareg to drive in electric-only mode up to almost 40MPH. In contrast, the non-VW arrangements lack a clutch making them that are incapable of forward locomotion without the gasoline engine involved.

For SUV duty the VW hybrid arrangement pays real dividends. Since there is no delicate CVT or complicated 2-mode tranny involved, the Touareg Hybrid retains all the off-road and towing cred of the non-hybrid models. If you recall, the raison d’être for the expensive 2-mode hybrid transmission was supposed to be world-class towing capacity and off-road ability. In reality the 2-mode system in GM’s full-size SUVs and pickup trucks are rated to tow 26% less than the 7700lb rating of the Touareg Hybrid. How about the other Germans? The X6 Active Hybrid’s towing rating is 32% less and the ML450 hybrid rings in at a whopping 35% lower than the Touareg.

Back in 2008 Jonny Lieberman waxed poetic about the Touareg V10 TDI’s air suspension and AWD system, but nearly fainted at the sight of the $79,650 price tag. That Touareg was born with Phaeton pricing but sold like ice cubes to Eskimos. In an attempt to re-align the Touareg’s pricing with American expectations, prices went on the same crash diet as the curb weight. Our tester as equipped in the fully-loaded, top-of-the-line Hybrid trim rang in at $60,565. A V6 FSI model starts at $40,850 or $54,000 even when comparably equipped to the base Hybrid model.  Oil burner lovers rejoice; the V6 TDI diesel splits the difference at a more reasonable (than the V10 TDI) $44,350. How did VW slash pricing on the Touareg? Simple: de-content.

Under the floorboards the go-anywhere 4xMotion AWD system is no longer an option on this side of the pond, instead American buyers will only get the Torsen based 4Motion system. While it was always nice to know your Touareg could take you to hell and back, the 4Motion system is more than capable enough for 99% of SUV shoppers. Also gone is the air suspension package which would give Euro buyers increased ground clearance in trade for less road feel. Shoppers will also notice that there are few options available on the new Touareg and a number of high-dollar options are not even available in the USA: no radar cruise control, no lane warning, blind spot warning, area-view camera system, or the aforementioned  4xMotion AWD with low range and air suspension. Aside from the radar cruise control with pre-collision warning, I agree with the de-conteting. Few Touareg shoppers opted for the air suspension when it was offered and even fewer took their VW off-road.

Thankfully VW has decided to make the new 6.5” LCD Nav system standard on the Hybrid models (optional on other Touareg models). The new system combines greatly improved graphics with 3-D like map rendering, iPod and general car setting controls. Working in conjunction with the Nav system is the 7” high-resolution LCD between the tachometer and speedometer which probably displays the best navigation directions available in an in-cluster LCD system. A 60-GB internal hard drive serves up the mapping and has 18 GB set aside for you to download your media. Unlike some models we have tested recently both screens fared well in direct sunlight with limited glare and good visibility.

Out on the road the lack of 4xMotion in the US model combined with the crash diet yield huge benefits in handling and road feel over the previous Touareg. While the electric power steering is suitably numb, it makes up for the lack of road feel with decent heft and linear responses. Thanks mostly to 19”wheels wrapped in wide low-profile tires, lateral grip is excellent. Speaking of rubbers, the VW brings 265 width Magnum-sized tires to the party; sure to give even BMW X5 drivers a touch of wheel envy. When pushed to the limits, however, the envy will stop at the rubber. While I did not have access to a skidpad, the X5 feels like it delivers superior balance in the corners and certainly offers greater road feel (no electric power steering). In the straight line the forthcoming X5 ActiveHybrid is expected to be almost as athletic as the X6 ActiveHybrid taking 5.4 seconds for a sprint to 60 (5.2 for the X6), the Touareg Hybrid is no slouch and only one-tenth of a second behind at 5.5 thanks largely to the low-end torque of the supercharger and the hefty input from the hybrid module.

Given the design of the hybrid clutch system, I was expecting transitions between hybrid modes to be jerky but instead was rewarded with nearly seamless operation. The 8 speed is a smooth and willing partner and the electric motor is powerful enough to propel you up mild rolling hills in the suburban jungle without the aid of the engine. It should be noted however that the battery is sized to only allow a mile or two of gentle electric-only operation. The only real gripe I have with the hybrid system is the brakes: the transition between regenerative braking and real braking is not as smooth as it could be and adding to the poor feel is a regenerative braking system that doesn’t always let go immediately after lifting the brake pedal giving the feeling that you have a stuck caliper.

Economy is supposedly the reason we have hybrids? Right? Wrong. If you want economy, then the Touareg diesel is still the king with an EPA score of 19/28 MPG city/highway. The Hybrid clocks in at 20/24 which is not bad compared to the base VR6 model at 16/23 but looking at these numbers misses the (some say misguided) pointof  the Hybrid. VW would rather you think of the V6 Hybrid as being the virtual V8 that it isn’t offering in the Touareg, and by that measure our average of 22.5MPG over an 800-mile week of mixed driving isn’t bad.

Of course numbers are nothing without perspective so here we go: The Mercedes ML450 Hybrid delivers a matching 20/24MPGbut is considerably slower requiring 2.3 seconds longer to run to 60MPH and is more than $7,000 more expensive when comparably equipped. The X6 ActiveHybrid is EPA tested at 17/19MPG and if the X5 ActiveHybrid ever lands on these shores we should expect similar EPA numbers and a similar $88,000 starting price tag. Of course if you really wanted to save the planet and your wallet you’ll just drive right by the VW dealer and pick up a 2011 Lexus RX450h which undercuts the VW with a fully-loaded price of $54,952 and delivers a lofty 32/28MPG at the expense of being the slowest to 60 in the bunch at 7.8 seconds to 60 and having a towing capacity of only 3,500lbs.

Although Volkswagen as a brand plays in the mass and near-luxury markets, the Touareg has been, and continues to be part of VW’s conflicted mission in America. Back in 2002 VW launched the Phaeton and Touareg in America, two vehicles with fantastic attention to detail and similarly high price tags. With the new Passat and Jetta going down-market to compete more directly with the Civics and Accords of the world, the Touareg has clung onto its premium feel and at least some of the premium pricing.  Perhaps this positioning is intended to give the Passat and Jetta some spizzarkle? Or is the Touareg just a leftover from Phaeton era, another world-class car with the wrong badge on the front? Our readers and the market will have to decide that one.

Volkswagen provided the vehicle, insurance and one tank of gas for this review.

We’ve seen the writing on the wall for a while: VW is dead set on finally making a profit in North America. In order be profitable, VW has to cut the manufacturing cost of its vehicles. As the Phaeton’s fate showed, America just isn’t ready for a VW that comes with sticker shock as a standard accessory. With the new “economized” 2011 Jetta in the wings, VW tossed us the keys to a 2010 Jetta TDI Cup Street Edition for a week as a farewell to the A5.

For those not familiar with VW’s TDI Cup racing series:  It’s a single-make racing series sanctioned by the Sports Car Club of America in 2008. The series is exclusive to North America and features modified 2009 VW Jetta TDIs being driven by 16-26 year olds. Harkening back to the simple days of stock car racing, the prizes are a modest $50,000 and “career advancement support” of $100,000, less the $45,000 entry fee charged by VW and the killer with teens behind the wheel: they bill you for damage to the car you drive.

With the series an apparent success, (despite the fact that nobody I spoke to had ever heard of it) VW decided that buyers in North America needed a TDI Cup car in their driveway. Coincidentally, manufacturers start releasing “special editions” of their cars in their autumn years as a raceway way of saying: this model is off to the knackers yard soon. With the GLI now unavailable, VW needed a boy-racer car to fill the gap. In their attempt to spur sales however, VW has fixed all the little items that were never wrong with the “old” Jetta.

The TDI Cup can be distinguished from its lesser brothers by the great gaping maw in the front bumper. It comes with a rear spoiler, side skirts, red painted brakes, large 18” wheels and a supersized price tag. It’s no wonder you can’t configure the Jetta TDI Cup on VW’s web site, you really need to be somewhere where you can be observed having a heart attack so that the kind VW dealer can call 911 for you. Our TDI Cup rang in at a jaw dropping $31,113. You would think that for this price you would at least get leather, but you’d be wrong. You think you’d get some sport seats from the GTI, but you’d be wrong there too. Also not included in the TDI Cup is the engine used in the racing series. Instead of the 170HP 2.0L diesel, the TDI Cup skates by with the standard 140HP / 236lb-ft engine from the regular Jetta TDI. I could understand the decision to use the lower output oil burner if the series’ engine was a one-off, but it’s sold in the EU in a number of different VW models. What gives?

For some reason, auto journalists always wax poetic about the Jetta. The handling is praised, the interior is for some reason always lauded as 99 percent  of an Audi at Wienerschnitzel prices, but when I get in one I have to ask: Why?

Don’t get me wrong, the A5 Jetta is a good place to be, inside and out, but it’s not perfection, and it does not possess an interior worth $31,113. Even the base price of $24,990 without destination charge seems steep for what you get. At least you get a tiny A/C vent in your glovebox that keeps your schnitzel cold.

Out on the road the Jetta does redeem itself with an excellent driving position and feel. The steering is spot on and the steering wheel is a joy to hold with high quality control buttons. The same cannot be said of the latest VW radio however. Its operation is clunky at best. This clash between well executed and slightly off base defines the personality of the TDI Cup car. It looks fast but isn’t, its suspension handles well but VW shod the wheels with some cheap rubber which limits grip. The 6-speed DSG transmission (as tested) is however a willing partner at all times. It seems that VW has worked out some of the kinks from the earlier DSG units as there were only a few moments where you could tell it wasn’t your ordinary slushbox. Starts are smooth, hill starts are confident and it never hunts for gears like many econo-boxes. Our average mileage after a long week of mixed city and highway driving was 40.1MPG – which is downright excellent.

On the Autocross track, the Jetta TDI Cup is a hoot, the handling is self-assured, and having driven one with summer tires instead of the all-seasons our tester was equipped with, I can say it carves corners almost like a GTI. This of course makes sense as the Jetta TDI Cup is essentially a diesel GLI. In a race like the TDI Cup where everyone is driving the same diesel car, speed is unimportant; it’s all down to accuracy in the corners and driver skill. Aye, there’s the rub again: the Jetta TDI is an excellent car, but a sports car for the modern American it is not. The problem keeps coming back to power. Yes, it carves corners with aplomb, but when you exit that turn you’re left with a planted right foot and little scoot. On the race track, this is fine if everyone is in the same boat, but on the American highway drivers will soon discover that Camrys and Accords will outgun your schnitzel-racer every day of the week.

As our week with the Jetta drew to a close, the 2011 Jetta was introduced in San Francisco. I would like to say I am sad to see the A5 Jetta era draw to a close, but if this is the pinnacle, then bring on the New Compact Sedan. With a lower price tag, more of what Americans say they want and new 200HP Jetta GLI promised for next year, I doubt many of these expensive limited edition Jetta Cups will fly off the shelf. At the end of the day, the market spoke, VW listened and we get what we asked for. Of course if you really wanted the best diesel sports sedan for your $32K, just visit the Audi dealer and get an A3 TDI.

Readers who are following TTAC on Facebook were given the opportunity to ask reader questions of the Jetta TDI Cup. If you would like to ask questions of car reviews in progress, or just follow TTAC, checkout our facebook page. FB fans, here are your answers: Aamir: jackrabbit starts didn’t impact the economy as much as I thought, about a 3.5MPG toll on average. Mike F: I was unable to get the DSG to stall, on gravel, wet grass, dry road surfaces and dirt, not sure what C&D did or if VW fixed the issue. David B: Yes it is the middle road between the GTI and the Golf TDI, but for the price the A3 TDI is the better buy.

Volkswagen provided the vehicle, insurance and one tank of diesel for this review.

Quite of few of you have asked me to do a history of VW do Brasil’s most sold car ever: the Gol. No mean feat, considering the runner-up is probably still the Beetle. I’m currently working on a history of the car (that I hope will be up soon), but as an appetizer, let’s check out VeeDub’s latest Brazilian offering. If you happen to like it, it’s an intriguing piece of work. If you don’t, you’ll probably think it’s just confused.

First, let’s get something out of the way. There is a Golf. And there is a Gol. Different cars. Different sports.

The latest version of the Gol follows the aventureiro philosophy. Raised suspension, mixed-terrain tyres, cool or hideous graphics (everything is relative). It’s all there. Plus it comes in this super yellow high visibility color that VW reserves only for this kind of car. Just in case you get stranded in the wilderness.

What’s it weak spot? Money. Ready? Here goes. R$40,370 (US$22,427). Or R$43,030 (US$23,906), if you choose to have yours with an automated transmission. Now, for this kind of money, and being a well-equipped car and all, you’d expect air con to be standard. You’d be wrong. You have to add almost 2,000 US dollars to get that. Considering that Brazilians with this kind of cash to blow on a car will expect air conditioning,  for that kind of money. That VW has the audacity to charge extra for it, or not include it already in the package is mind-staggering. And is yet another reason that helps explain VW’s fall from grace in Brazil.

Pricing and marketing issues aside you ask, how does it drive? It drives like any other Gol with a 1.6 engine out there. Except it has beefier tires and the suspension is raised 28 mm over the regular version (according to Brazilian enthusiast site Bestcars). This makes the air drag coefficient worse. This all means your Gol Rallye will fall behind the regular version. In a straight line or in the curvies. By how much? Well VW do Brasil informs that the regular version will eventually reach 190 or 192 km/h (or 118.75/120 mph according to fuel, see below). This alternative puppy will fight, doggedly, to get you up to 112.5 or 113.75 mph – numbers gathered at Bestcars). Those top speeds though are hard to get to (maybe on an endless, flat, straight, sea-level highway with perfect pavement). I do have to give VW credit though. This Gol will go all day at 160 km/h (100 mph) without breaking anything. Just be aware it won’t be quiet going about it and that you’ll have to brake mightily to make that curve ahead.

Speaking of speed, the Gol Rallye’s engine is the same one that motivates the regular “street” version. The venerable 1.6 EA unit. Venerable of course has different connotations. One of them is old. You can see how old it’s getting when you realize it only produces 101 or 104 hp (if fed with ethanol or the concoction called gasoline in Brazil). It also (you can also thank those exaggerated tires) feels less spirited under hard acceleration, though the factory numbers show an almost negligible difference (from 10.1/9.8 to 10.6/10.3 secs from 0 to 100 km/h or 0 to 62.5 mph, thanks Bestcars).

Like I said before, it drives like any other Gol. So, despite the thicker front sway bar, and harder springs out in the rear, this car fearfully dives under hard (or not) braking, and mindlessly lifts its snout under hard (or not) acceleration. Due to the special suspension bits, it’s also harder than other Gols (not to mention the competition). On Brazil’s normally busted pavement it becomes quite a nuisance. Call me soft, but other cars have a softer suspension (that don’t give up the ghost in curves, either), which soaks up bumps and potholes and etc., etc., etc. better. Some, many Brazilians in fact, call this sporting, taunt, Germanic. In a word, superior. My backside doesn’t agree. It just calls it like it feels it: Sore.

The automated gearbox is another thing. Not quite as effective as an automatic, it’s not nearly as costly either. It has become rather popular in Brazil precisely because of that. However, it’s just not as smooth as a conventional automatic. It requires a learning curve. Or you’ll be bumping and jerking your head through traffic. The trick is to lift you right foot of the accelerator when you “sense” a shift is coming. This becomes almost second nature to the good drivers out there. For those with learning difficulties, it just means a head-jarring ride. BTW, VW links this feature to the trip computer. If you opt for the manual, you can’t get a computer. Why? Curious minds want to know…

How about the stick? This is the pièce de resistance of Brazilian VW fans. They just can’t get enough of touting its superiority. It has short throws. It has precise engagement. But, but, what’s that noise? Well I’ve been told that there’s  a little part called the tremulator that causes that. In my Dad’s company-issued regular 1.6 Gol all gear changes were accompanied by a very audible and distinct thud! In the Rallye it’s somewhat subdued, but it’s there. Maybe not thud!, but thud. Call me crazy but I prefer a little less precision and slightly longer throws, but no “thudding”.

Inside, there are some differences to the regular version. The headliner has gone from gray to black. Not a deep black, but black nonetheless. In such a small car the sensation of airiness is important, at least to me, but that headliner… Again, in the spirit of the car, we’ll call it sporting. Finishing is meh, though well put together. Some call the design and color choices somber. Others just think they’re stark. The pedal placement issue has not been resolved though. The steering wheel now aligns perfectly with the seat, but the pedals are still weirdly and uncomfortably misplaced to the right. More often than not, I’d shoot my foot out to depress the clutch and find nothing but air. Of course you get used to it. However, other cars don’t have this issue. It’s an improvement though for VW as older Gols used to have the wheel, seat and pedals all misaligned, bending your spine into an “S”. Chiropractors no doubt love the Gol. Getting back to that clutch…does it really have to be so heavy?

So, let’s sum up. It’s taunt, sporting, somber, classic, drives like a tank and, according to most Brazilians, is terribly reliable. For others it’s hard, stark and dark, and just simply uncomfortable.

So there you have it. TTAC’s first write-up of the Gol. Certainly not what VW wants to hear. It also flies in the face of what many of my countrymen think. It’s my assessment though. And I stick by it.

In spite of its name and the fact that it’s the one of the largest automakers in the world, Americans tend to see Volkswagen as something of a niche manufacturer. Certainly Volkswagen’s reputation in this country is for making cars that conform to our ideas of “European-ness.” Unfortunately for Volkswagen, relatively few Americans want to spend extra for the taut suspension, high-quality interior and refined ambiance of a European car. So, with the 2011 Jetta, Volkswagen decided to give America what it was asking for: more car for less. Sounds hard to resist, right?

In a way, tailoring the Jetta to US tastes was almost inevitable. In Germany, the Jetta is known as the “backpack Golf,” and is forever in the shadow of its iconic hatchback sibling. Stateside, the Golf is as rare as lederhosen, selling about a quarter of the Jetta’s volume in a good year. And with a sedan-oriented Chinese market on the rise, a larger, cheaper Jetta makes all the sense in the world.

By now Volkswagen enthusiasts are probably starting to get scared… and well they should be. This car was not designed with them in mind: it was designed with the Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, and a $16k price-point in mind. From the outside, there’s little family resemblance to its brand-mates beyond a sense of disciplined cleanliness that some will call restrained and others will call dull. Though pictures don’t do the comparison justice, a Kia Forte that wandered into one of the launch event parking lots was nearly indistinguishable in the crowd of 2011 Jettas. Take that as you will.

As with most cars that are built to a price point, the compromises don’t leap out until you actually sit in the thing (with one all-too familiar exception). And in the 2011 Jetta they don’t so much leap out at you, as sulk around waiting to be caught. At first glance all seems nearly right with the world, as the interior design is satisfyingly VW-like. But then you notice the simple instrumentation, an awkward seam by the window switch, the distinctive shapes and proportions of molded hard plastic. By the time you start touching things, it’s clear that there’s no point in even comparing this car to its predecessor.

But how many consumers out there knock on a car’s dashboard during the buying decision? Volkswagen is clearly betting that not many do, because the shockingly hollow-sounding experience does not inspire confidence. On the other hand, plenty of consumers do use HVAC dials, and the Jetta’s wiggle when you grab them, like skinny Elvis after a handful of dexedrine (or, to use a less indulgent simile, like a Scion xD’s). In fact, nearly everything you touch will tell you that VW has taken a page from Toyota’s consequence-free decontenting spree, and that any sense of European charm is strictly coincidental.

So how much Euro flavor has been left in the drive? On paper, the switch to a torsion beam rear suspension proves that money has been saved, but the experience is blessedly competent. The steering is not “Corolla light” as some reviewers have indicated, but is well-weighted for a solid, progressive feel. Unfortunately, the steering’s heft isn’t well-connected to what’s happening on the road, and things feel somewhat vague and uncommunicative when the road starts winding.

The Jetta’s suspension is also better than many of its mass-market competitors. Body lean is surprisingly well-controled, without sacrificing cruising comfort. On rough, potholed roads, strong progressive damping smothers even the harshest bottom-out, as if Volkswagen slipped a few extra slices of American cheese into the shocks. And since the Jetta is slightly lighter than its predecessor, everything feels well-controlled, despite the absence of a truly nailed-down “Euro” feel.

On the engine front, Volkswagen had little scope for decontenting. Our well-equipped SEL model was powered by the 2.5-liter iron-block five-pot that comes standard on all but the bare-base and GLI-spec Jettas, and has long been a whipping boy for Euro-obsessed VW fans. If you know anything about VW’s European TFSI engines, the 2.5′s lazy grunt and throaty five-pot gargle will seem unforgiveably proletarian. Most Americans, on the other hand, will appreciate its good power (170 hp, 168 lb-ft, 0-60 in about 8.5), slightly musical engine note, and tolerance of regular gas. On an objective basis, a slight bogging in first gear followed by an abrupt rush of power at 3,000 RPM is the only real annoyance we found (although weak-for-its-class fuel economy can be expected).

What we’re looking at with the new Jetta then, is not a budget taste of German sports-sedan nirvana, but a more value-oriented commuter. Skip the slightly-vague five-speed (like you need to be told), lean back in your faux-leather “V-Tex” seat, and cruise in the detached American style, and you’ll not be wildly disappointed. Nor will your rear-seat passengers, who will doubtless appreciate the extra 2.7 inches of rear legroom (resulting in a BMW 7-Series-competitive 38.1 inches, thanks China!). Trunk space is also remarkably good, although the rear seats don’t fold flat to optimize the center pass-through.

Given this competent cruising focus, one can’t help but return again and again to the savagely cheapened interior. It’s one thing to give Americans old-school engine and suspension technology, and a homogenized version of the European driving experience, but who says that we don’t want to touch nice things? Were the Chrysler-built Routan minivan a stunning sales success, the 2011 Jetta’s similar-quality interior would make sense. Instead, VW’s justifications for the accountant-grade plastics and flimsy switches are convoluted and difficult to swallow.

First, let’s deal with the price issue. VW insists that, despite favorable impressions of the car, American consumers haven’t considered Jetta due to its high price alone. Fine. But in order to reach its $15,995 base MSRP, the Jetta “S” needs more than a Wal-Mart interior… it needs to travel back in time. In addition to the torsion beam rear-suspension, base Jettas are also saddled with rear drum brakes, and the old “two-point-slow” two liter engine, making 115 horsepower with minimal mileage improvements over the 2.5. Needless to say, Volkswagen didn’t bring a single “S” model to the San Francisco launch, but on paper we’re looking at a Jetta III with more room and a worse interior.

In order to make this questionable achievement possible, every other Jetta including our $23,395 SEL with sunroof is saddled with the same $16k-competitive-ish interior. The only exception is the forthcoming GLI, which should also offer a more rewarding drive thanks to sports suspension with a multilink rear setup, and the GTI’s 2.0T engine (not to mention a hefty pricetag bump). Over the weekend launch, VW’s reps constantly dangled the GLI as the cure for our SEL’s sub-Euro performance and handling shortcomings, but were cagey about exact interior improvements… at least until we asked about a wagon version.

Instead of offering a new wagon, Volkswagen will continue to offer the previous Sportwagon alongside the new 2011 Jetta. With its new Golf-alike fascia, the Sportwagon now more closely resembles a European-style “Golf Variant” look, and offers everything that VW’s accountants stripped out of the new Jetta. Which is handy, considering that the vast majority of Sportwagons are ordered with TDI engines. In other words, all of Volkswagen’s premium-enthusiast Euro-appeal has been stripped from the Jetta, and been concentrated into the higher-quality, better-driving, more-expensive Sportwagon that true Euro-enthusiasts would have ordered anyway.

Volkswagen invited us to a weekend-long press event for this review. They paid our airfare, put us up for two nights in one of the nicest hotels in San Francisco, plied us with several excellent meals, and picked up our bar tab every night. The last point alone is projected to have dropped the company’s global profit by at least two percentage points.

Polo players don’t drive German superminis, in the same way Dustin Hoffman never pulled over near a Hollywood studio in a Chevy Celebrity. So, who does drive a Polo? The same people who drive a Golf – only ten years younger, with a bank account ten grand shorter. And until last year, these people have been a little alienated from the VW customer circle – with a new Golf recently introduced and the older Polo getting a little long in the tooth.

Enter the fifth generation Polo. Unlike the MK6 Golf, here’s a car that wasn’t rushed into production: the MK4 Polo was introduced in 2002 and succumbed to irrelevancy over its last years, as the entire European B-segment was stirred by new models and powertrains.

If there’s any comment to be made on the exterior of the MK5 Polo, it’s déjà vu. Take off your glasses, and it’s a Golf – complete with the corporate two-bar grille and spider-leg emblem. It’s as chunky looking in profile as its mature sibling and has the same underwhelmingly dramatic roof line. Glasses back on, and several elements distinguish the junior VW from the Golf: different pentagonal backlights, a cut-out C pillar, an edgy front diffuser spawning speed bump phobia and what appears to be a serious eating disorder.

Underwhelmingly-impressive is the expression you’re looking for. Like the Golf, the Polo is very much a classless car – one that would look just as natural in an Amsterdam suburb as in Munich’s old city, as unprovocative in red as in pearl white and as classy as a teenager’s first car as a grandmother’s last.

Just like the previous Polo, the fifth-gen Polo pushes the interior quality bar further up the scale. Whether this interior is the best in B-segment territory depends on your definition of best: there’s little doubt that this is the most ‘big-car’ interior in the class, but there’s also no avoiding the feeling that it’s just a little dull and expected.

Many – if not most – knobs and controls come straight from the Golf, and seeing as Volkswagen has seemingly unlimited access to that soft-touch material mine, there’s acres of that too. Everything you touch or move – from the door knob to the gear lever – feels like German engineers have spent sleepless nights perfecting its pitch, sound and feel. If you really choose to nitpick, there are harder-than-expected plastics in the door area.

Like its slightly anemic-looking outside proportions imply, the Polo doesn’t shock in spaciousness. Two adults will find sufficient room in the back seats; the third one should consider other transportation options. At 280 liters, the trunk isn’t particularly commodious, but it’s easy to load and has a useful storage compartment underneath. There are numerous additional storage spaces inside the cabin, including two closeable hatches beneath the front seats.

So far, so Volkswagen – solid, impressive, boring. But this particular tester has one interesting ace up its sleeve: the powertrain. Replacing the old model’s 1.6 gas engine and 6 speed Aisin gearbox combination are a direct-injected and turbocharged 1.2 liter TSI engine (oddly featuring only 8 valves) and a seven-speed DSG dual-clutch gearbox. On paper, it doesn’t sound like there’s much difference: the horsepower count remains similar – there are around 105 of them – and there’s only one cog joining the party. Even the autojournos’ favorite cliché, torque, only takes a modest 1.34 pound-feet boost to just below 12 pound-feet.

The secret lies in power availability: the old 1.6 needed no less than 3,800 revs to achieve the maximum torque. The turbocharged four pot only needs 1,500 of those – and that’s enough to cut 0-60 time by about two seconds.

On the road, the new engine proves to be a refreshing surprise. Let anyone who doubts the viability of a microscopic turbocharged engine drive this Polo, and he will return fully converted. There’s more than enough power to make progress anywhere across the rev range once the turbocharger kicks in at somewhere around 1,500 rpms, and when pushed to the limits you’d be hard pressed to tell you’re driving something that’s supposed to resemble a 1.6 engine, never mind a puny 1.2.

The engine also rewards the driver and passengers with smoothness unmatched by the gruff and agricultural 1.6. This is where my ambivalent feelings about the DSG gearbox kick in (see what I did there?). Seven speeds are a lot of ratios to choose from, and this particular gearbox doesn’t hesitate to showcase all of them. Left to its own devices, it will upshift as soon as it can – leaving the TSI’s generous power band and constantly requiring one or two downshifts to maintain acceleration. Even in traffic-jam speeds, it’s not uncommon to reach the third and fourth ratios.

The seven speed DSG is also nowhere as smooth as the older 6 speed. This is because the newer version uses a pair of dry clutches instead of wet ones. This setup still hasn’t reached all DSG models since it’s only rated for weaker powerplants – currently, the SEAT Ibitza Cupra and Polo GTi, at 178 bhp, are the strongest models to utilize this particular setup.

You can’t put any blames on shifting speed – but in slower speeds, the gearbox feels somewhat shaky and sluggish, and off the line response is met with a surprising delay. This still remains a very good slushbox – but it’s one you’d have to get used to. It functions better in S mode – where the seventh ratio is disabled, throttle response is made sharper, gears are pushed further up the rev range and braking is met with numerous downshifts – and a neat throttle blip between them. There are no steering wheel shifters, but commanding in manual mode is still pleasurable with instant response from the ‘box and a satisfying feel from the lever itself.

The tiny engine idles surprisingly loudly and with an alarming degree of vibrations. Inside the Polo, however, you’d be hard pressed to tell the engine is even on at all. This is a recurring theme: the baby VW is a quiet cruiser and refinement is at the top of the class. Ride quality is also good – with a slightly harsh initial suspension travel, you’re not likely to confuse it with French hatchbacks of yore, but even the most daunting bumps are dealt with resounding comfort and softness. The front seats are comfortable and supportive, but have an annoying bulge in their upper parts, which forces a slightly artificial back posture.

The surprises end with the driving dynamics. The Polo is a car which pushes you not to push it: the electro-hydraulic steering is number, lighter and longer than I recall from the Skoda Fabia. It’s still in ‘acceptable’ territory, but at no point reminds you of anything remotely sporty. The brake pedal has a slightly awkward travel with a very strong initial bite and less than stellar progress further down the line.

Dynamic challenges are met in a composed manner and with sufficient grip, but not with much pleasure. That’s really a shame, because even other B-segment cars from VW – like the SEAT Ibiza – feature naughtier driving dynamics and more driver involvement, not to mention competition from cars such as the Ford Fiesta.

Greater men than I have already deemed the Polo to be the European Car of the Year. It’s not very surprising to find that the fifth-generation Volkswagen Polo is a very good car. It’s equally as unsurprising to find that it has a class-beating cabin and a class-beating powertrain.

“Unsurprising” and “underwhelmingly-impressive” then, are the recurring ideas behind the Polo. The Polo, like some people, is an example of a textbook execution. Compare it to a person, and you have a very intelligent and pleasant individual which you won’t want to take out for a beer.

To an automotive enthusiast, this may sound like criticism. To Volkswagen’s ears, this is a pat on the shoulder: creating a mini-Golf is exactly the idea behind the new Polo. In that, they’ve succeeded immensely: the transition from Polo to Golf is now as smooth and obvious as ever.

Volkswagen proided the vehicle, insurance and one tank of gas for this review.

This review was made possible by icar.co.il

Having some time on my hands, I ventured out again into cardealershipland. Wanted to get my hands on the mini mites that inhabit many an urban Brazilian cowboy’s dream. You know, the call of the sertão (that’s what you think we call the pampas.) In the left corner, all the way from Italy, but made in Brazil, the long-time favorite and market leader Fiat Strada Adventure Locker. In the right corner, the Teutonic tiny titan, the all new VW Saveiro Cross. As the long names suggest, these are the top of the line offerings from each maker. Both offer cheaper, less equipped versions for the daily grind and/or work routine. So hold your cavalos, vaqueiro, I mean, hold your horses, cowboy! Which one comes out on top?

Right off the bat, I must tell you that the two automakers took different approaches when designing their car-based pickups. Fiat kept it more “real” as its contender still feels like a pickup. VeeDub went the other way and, recognizing the reality of the market, strove to give its mini truck all the driving characteristics of a regular car. Thusly, the Fiat Strada is more tail-happy and busy-riding, while the VW Saveiro Cross is surprisingly composed and car-like. But, this comes at the expense of lesser (light) off-road capacity and lower (slightly) capacity to carry weight (685kg for the Italian and 661kg the German – as if anyone would care).

The Fiat Strada offers extended and double cab versions in this trim. The Saveiro Cross comes only in extended cab form. The Fiat is a hair roomier in extended form (300Lx280L, according to Brazilian website vrum.com.br), not to mention the double cab, though you’d be hard pressed to put 4 full-bodied Americans in the double cab (only 2 doors). Of course, deriving as they do from the Fiat Palio and VW Gol, interior dimensions are similar to their originators. So it’s no surprise that the Italians, masters of finding room within scarce real estate, make their car seemingly roomier and more accommodating than the Germany. Shades of Volk ohne Raum.

According to the widely-read Brazilian website bestcars.com.br, the Strada is equipped with a GM-sourced and very antique engine. It’s got 1.8L and packs 112 or 114 horses (if topped off with Brazilian gasoline or ethanol) and is very torquey, albeit rather harsh and noisy at higher RPMs (in character with its American heart and totally out of character to its Italian adoptive parents). The Saveiro comes with a 1.6L mill that’s good for 101hp or 104hp (gasoline the former, ethanol the latter). It’s rather noisy at higher speeds due to its short gearing. The Strada is ultimately faster, reaching a top speed of 111 mph on ethanol, while the Saveiro goes to 109 mph (also on ethanol). The Strada accelerates better, too, getting from naught to 100 km/h in 11.2 sec, while the Saveiro does the same a second slower (both using ethanol to get their best marks).

But numbers don’t tell the whole story. Sitting in the captain’s chair, the Strada makes the better impression on me. The seats, steering wheel and pedals are perfectly aligned. In the Saveiro, the pedals are skewed to the right, so much so that I stalled the car when in a panic stop my left foot shot forward to depress the clutch and found nothing but air. Both are manuals with 5 speeds. The Saveiro has shorter throws and is more precise, but buy is it ever noisy! There is a definite thump every time you move the lever. I prefer the slight vagueness and longer throws of the Strada. I can do withou the audible feedback (thump! thump!) of every gear change.

The Fiat Strada comes with dedicated off-road tires. They squeal and protest whenever provoked. Above legal speeds they don’t really do a good job of keeping the tail in. The Saveiro is much more car like and comes with useless 50/50 on/off road tires, though you can opt for dedicated off-road rubber. It certainly corners more neutrally, though the factory should make up its mind and offer legitimate on-road only tires. For most people buying the car, that’d be ideal. It would improve the car’s handling limits.

Honestly though, test drives in Brazil come with a salesperson by your side. And they don’t like to take more than 15 minutes, either. However, I got them for at least 30 minutes and scared my passenger a few times, even though it was strictly city driving. Braking felt consistent in both pickups as the setup is the same (drums in front, disks in back – ABS optional for both). Being 125kg lighter, the Saveiro felt more spritely, though the numbers show the Strada is always faster (again, according to bestcars.com.br).

Inside, nothing to gloat over. The Saveiro Cross is better as it inherited the new VW Fox’s instruments, but not much else. There’s nothing really exclusive to this version (same blue/red light et al). The Strada offers some gloss-over regular run-of-the-mill Palio instrumenration with different lighting (yellow/red as opposed to the rest of the family’s orange/red) and some totally useless gauges, like an inclinometer, atop the dashboard.  The plastics and finishing are generally better in the Fox, I mean, Saveiro.

As for pricing, it’s one of the few times that you regret living in Brazil. The Strada is listed at Brazilian reais 47.240 ($26,240) and the Saveiro Cross goes for reais 41.840 or $23.240. Nevertheless, the Strada outsells the Saveiro 3 to 1.  No wonder, the Strada comes with power everything, A/C and their “locker” system, which, when engaged, electronically blocks the differential at low speeds to help you out of difficult situations. The base price of the Saveiro is just for show. When equipped similarly to the Strada, it is but a few cents cheaper. And doesn’t even offer something remotely like the “locker” system. Also, now I know what the inclinometer is for. The sales guy quotes the price, you look at the gauge, and it tells you. “Not steep at all!”

Pricing as a way to get customers in the door I understand. Gimmicks like VW is doing with their pricing are self-defeating, as the stats confirm.

Who’s our winner? Depends on our priorities. Want a car-pickup with car suspension and drivability? Take the Saveiro. Want a car-pickup more like a pick-up? With real pickup suspension? Take the Strada. Since I prefer the Strada’s no tricks pricing, pickup demeanor in a pickup, I take the Strada. The sertão beckon.

It’s funny how reality sometimes smacks you like that. My youthful (space) flights of fancy also included plans to own a daily driver capable of an 11-second quarter mile, but today I drive a car capable of pulling a trailer and carrying six adults. I’m embarrassed to admit that it’s never accelerated to sixty in under nine seconds. Time, along with an inconvenient concept called “real life,” end up teaching us that raw power isn’t really everything. In the end, we often find ourselves settling for many things that would have sorely disappointed our younger expectations.

However, before I blast off into a fit of nostalgic anomie, I should mention a fabulous little coping mechanism called the 2010 Volkswagen GTI. Yes, the original hot hatch and its segment-founding “you-can-be-responsible-and-still-have-fun” formula remain thankfully intact—when you get behind the wheel, your life will almost assuredly suck less. Unless you are an astronaut. Who owns a Ferrari.

The new-for-2010 “Mark VI” version of the GTI continues the evolution of Volkswagen’s original concept by injecting a smidge more visual excitement into the rowdy runabout. Slightly more aggressive than its immediate predecessor, the Mark VI version doesn’t return to the sharp, boxy edges of the original, but instead hides those edges under a virtual sheet of cleverly contoured plastic and sheet metal. Visually, it’s a little more captivating than the Mark V, and the prominence of sculpted sides, the trademark red line framing the grille, and an altogether less Audi-like headlight treatment all help transfer more rhetorical weight back to the left side of the term “sport compact.”

The aesthetic satisfaction continues inside, with an interior that belongs in an [insert Audi of your choice here]. Top-tier materials and buttery smooth switchgear complement an open, airy cabin that forgoes the popular claustrophobia-inducing, massive center consoles that make newer/taller/heavier cars look and feel less spacious than older/lower/lighter cars ever did. Retro-plaid seats look and feel great with bolsters that provide butt and torso-stabilizing lateral support without making ingress and egress too difficult. And the rear seat is pretty roomy, too. An excellent 600-watt stereo (a separate unit from the climate control system) sounds great when you’re blaring Queen’s greatest hits, though the GTI’s fabulous tiller will have you singing about a “Flat-Bottomed Steering Wheel” that makes your rockin’ world go ‘round. “Bottom” line: this GTI’s cockpit is so sporty that you’ll never again want to get on your bikes and ride.

But what about the “raw power” your youthful memories long for?

Uh, did I mention how great the interior is?

No, you won’t find F-1 rocket engine-levels of power (or even Mazdaspeed3-levels) emanating from the Mark VI’s holdover TSI four-banger, but as a consolation, you get what power there is in a fun, unique way. Who needs a big Hog and its loud V-Twin to remind them of their coolness when they can have the same flat torque curve in a practical, thrifty (and weatherproof!) little hatchback? At 30 MPH, I dropped the GTI’s excellent 6-speed manual into sixth gear at the bottom of a long incline and floored it. To my surprise, the little turbocharged VW gathered steam smartly and never once lugged. No, 207 pound-feet doesn’t sound like that much torque (and it’s not), but when you have it continuously from 1,800 to 5,000 RPM, it can be a real hoot. Turbo lag doesn’t exist here, and neither does any perceptible driveline shudder. Turns out, Finesse + Power X Refinement > Just Raw Power, after all.

Speaking of finesse and refinement, the driving dynamics of the Mark VI are what really make you forget about all that power and the 911 Turbo you’ll never own. All the ingredients are present in this recipe, and in just the right amounts. Although the electric power steering is a bit numb, it sidesteps the oft-related sin of being rubbery and still manages to do a terrific job of communicating with the H-rated (yes, H-rated) 225/40R18s. Credit the tires’ mild speed rating with a beautifully compliant ride that feels less like a hot hatch and more like a 5-Series Bimmer. Although steering response could be faster with rock-ribbed, Z-rated rubber, the car still handles stupendously due to well-chosen springs and dampers that are perfectly suited to the GTI’s balanced persona. The brakes, like the tires, are much less aggressive than you might expect (especially given their substantial through-the-wheels appearance); even though they might not coax you to rush-hour hoonery, front-to-rear bias is so neatly worked out that front-end dive simply doesn’t exist (not even under “soil-your-underwear” braking).

When I was a kid and fantasized about limitless power beneath my feet and had career aspirations involving NASA—while piloting my darty go-kart around our property—I was generally frustrated with the constraints of being 10 years old; I figured that everything would be better, more exciting, and more fun when I was older. Now I realize that I should have lived in the moment more back then.

Trust me, downhill four-wheel drifts on dirt in a five-horsepower go-kart are a lot more fun than most cars you’ll ever own, especially if “real life” dictates that your daily driver possess even a modicum of utility. Volkswagen gets this. And instead of trying to recreate youthful speed lust in a compromised package where power overwhelms finesse and refinement, the company has done a great job of including all “the right stuff” in the 2010 GTI.