VW Chattanooga Building Hundreds of Passat TDIs Without Front Fascias

Mark Stevenson
by Mark Stevenson

According to one Chattanooga factory worker on the TDI Club forum, Volkswagen is ramping up production of the new Passat TDI despite not being certified by the Environmental Protection Agency regarding its emissions.

The new 2016 Passat, which will launch later this year, is equipped with three different engines — a 1.8-liter turbocharged and a 3.6-liter V-6 gasoline engines, and a 2-liter diesel engine. The poster said those cars already built and equipped with the TDI engine are missing significant portions of their front fascia as they come off the assembly line.

The Passats in question are missing headlights, grilles and front bumpers, said the poster.

From the poster:

Current production on the 2016 Passat is increasing at the Chattanooga plant. We are all confused as to what VW is doing. Initially, we were only building the 4 cylinder gas engine for the US market for California only. We were building the diesel engines for Canada only. We built a few 4 and 5 cylinder gas engines for Mexico and Saudi Arabia. Last week the day after the news broke that VW was pulling the request for certifying the diesel engines in the US, guess what happened? We started building the US diesel every 2 or 3 cars on the line. The difference is, the US cars are missing the headlights and front bumpers and grills. They are wrapping them and parking them in the outside lot. We increased production to 180 cars per shift, 2 shifts total.

We aren’t sure what the reasoning behind the US diesels are unless they plan on stockpiling them and getting certification approval at a later date. Either way, building only California gas engines only and none for the rest of the US is causing everyone to be concerned for our future here. We built 180 total cars on day shift yesterday (Monday).

We were told last week that the fix isn’t going to be easy for existing TDI’s. If the software upgrades don’t fix the emission problems we were told the other option might be a new engine install. Could be a very costly and difficult fix. Yes, we are worried about our future here.

So, with limited production of gas models for the U.S. and a ramp up of diesel production, it looks like Volkswagen is confident they will be able to sell Passat TDIs soon.

We’ve reached out to officials in Chattanooga but have yet to hear back.

Mark Stevenson
Mark Stevenson

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  • Corey Lewis Corey Lewis on Oct 15, 2015

    "Building Hundreds of Passat TDIs Without Front Fascias" They're just making the timing belt and headlamp bulb replacement easier for the consumer.

  • Deanst Deanst on Oct 20, 2015

    Where's the article lamenting the death of the manual transmission Passat?

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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