carcounsel.com |HID|

One of the first things you notice when you climb into the new Volkswagen Passat is its vast interior space. The previous-generation Passat shared its platform with the Audi A4 and A6; by extension, it shared those cars’ longitudinal engine configuration. This latest Passat, however, is based on the Golf/Jetta chassis and as such uses a transverse engine layout that grants more interior room, especially for rear-seat occupants. The new platform also allows front-wheel-drive Passats to use an independent rear suspension that is as sophisticated as those on the all-wheel-drive 4Motion examples. (Previously, front-wheel-drive cars made do with a torsion-beam rear setup.) – automobile

Commentary: Remember the Passat of the mid 90s? The one with the limo-like back seat, original VR6 engine and the Corrado-like chassis? Reliability aside, I envy those who’ve had one to this day…

That back seat was made possible by a transversely mounted engine. When VW and Audi started to share more in the late 90s, the Passat got a longutudinally mounted engine mounted ahead of the wheels meaning much of the body length was devoted to the car ahead of the windshield – not as much of the car’ length was available for passengers to it was long by neccessity. And only 4motion models had a rear suspension that didn’t cry uncle at the first sign of a corner or a bump (torsion beams have comparatively poor lateral location and short travel).

The newest Passat returns to transverse engine mounting but sadly the body has grown even larger and the suspension is just as lax.

I wonder if the GLI’s suspension bits bolt right in…

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 at 11:17 am and is filed under Volkswagen, technical.