[s-cars] Passat 4motion W8 wagon: Opinions? (LAC)

[Lee Levitt]

Marc,

Drive a 2002 A6 3.0 quattro wagon. Very nice car, good motor, good 
suspension, lots of promise, and much more car than the Passat.

And the A6 is *very* pretty in red.

For what this Passat is listed for, you could find a nice A6 and 
put an aftermarket warranty on it, or have it Audi certified.

Lee
'02 A6 3.0 quattro avant
'96 A6 quattro avant



On Wed Jun 29 17:20:25 PDT 2005, Marc Gorelick 
<marc at frogville.net> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> Thanks for the great responses!
> 
> One major factor to point out is that this is going to be the 
> wife's daily driver, not mine--I'm driving the UrS4. So, I am 
> less concerned about things like suspension stiffness than I 
> would be if it were MY car to drive all the time. I think it's 
> got the upgraded suspension, though since it's got the sport 
> wheels and I /think /they were a package deal. The wife insists 
> she doesn't want a manual shifter so she gets to live with the 
> tiptronic, which I have seen others complain about. However when 
> you are dealing with a 3-year-old in the back seat I can 
> understand where she'd prefer to have the automatic.
> 
> FWIW, the car is VW certified so I believe it will be under 
> warranty until it's got 74k miles on it (50k + another 2 
> years/24k). It's got 28k on it now.
> 
> Here's the actual listing, for anyone interested:  
> *http://tinyurl.com/cep5s
> 
> *I've seen a couple that were cheaper but she is really in love 
> with the red paint and hates black interiors since (as she puts 
> it) "black is too hot." ;-) Having said all of this, it might be 
> that the A6 is a better idea for her.
> 
> Thanks again for all the sage advice, I knew this was a good 
> place to ask.
> 
> Marc
> *
> *
> Taka Mizutani wrote:
> 
>> Not to rain on your parade, but I've recently seen a lot of '01 
>> and
>> '02 Passats come in as trade-ins. I'm not too impressed with 
>> these
>> cars, with 50-90k miles on them- the body integrity is not as 
>> good as
>> the Audis- little rattles, doors don't close with the solid 
>> thunk that
>> they used to, etc. Seeing this, I would not consider a used 
>> Passat
>> unless it was seriously inexpensive. I guess the quality 
>> standards or
>> the materials used in the cars are not as good as the Audis.
>> 
>> On the other hand, I've seen recently a '02 Infiniti G35 come 
>> in- it
>> was beat to hell after 50k miles- window regulators were not 
>> smooth,
>> transmission didn't engage smoothly, I was pretty shocked at how
>> poorly the car took the miles. The facelifted '05 cars might be
>> better.
>> 
>> I drove the W8 Passat when it came out a couple years ago- the
>> standard suspension was very soft, the car was undertired, 
>> massive
>> understeer, slow shifting transmission (tiptronic), I was very
>> underwhelmed. The A6 4.2 was a much better drive, even with 
>> standard
>> suspension. I think the only way to get a Passat W8 would be 
>> with a
>> 6-speed manual and sport suspension- anything less would be
>> disappointing.
>> 
>> The other issue is that the W8 is such a rare drivetrain that I 
>> wonder
>> how difficult it will be to repair a few years down the road- 
>> not too
>> many techs have experience with one.
>> 
>> Taka
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>> 
>> 
> 
> 
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