if there is one thing which i don't particularly enjoy writing about on this blog, that would be car reviews. and yet i do them as and when reason allows. this, look you see, is for the benefit of anyone curious about the details of a specific kind of car, as seen (and subsequently documented) by someone who isn't all that interested in the subject.
before you read any more of this, you may wish to make yourself aware of the provenance or style of my view on cars. for that, you can by all means have a look at this review, or even this one, with the latter being a fair bit more recently.
right, then. this one. as you may have worked out from the title, this is a review of a volkswagen passat. whereas i would not wish to speak in any great detail of how i came to drive it, or for just as indicated eleven (11) miles, well, i did drive it. this was a fairly new, reasonably out of the box variation, with the number plate giving every indication that it was this year's (2020) model, and it had south of ten thousand miles on the clock. south of eight thousand, too.
my general understanding and (let us be honest) appreciation of a car is that it is a convenient, relatively efficient (allowing for planetary damage) means of getting to various locations you may want or need to. mostly, though, i see a car as a way to listen to quality vibes, quite close to the correct volume for such, as you go about getting to where you need to.
the above gives an immediate reflection of all that is wrong with the passat, and indeed a terrible number of so-called "modern" vehicles. i speak, of course, of the lack of a CD player, or tape deck. for some reason them what make cars (and similar) are of a mind that physical format music in vehicles is now obsolete; that we, the people, are happy to listen to the wireless, or "stream" stuff, or plug phones and what have you in to the car (or whatever) for vibes requirements. and that latter, as i shall get to, fails miserably on this car anyway.
you may well have detected a suggestion of a sense that me and the passat did not work out ever so well. this is correct. my understanding was that volkswagen was a german company, and remains so to this day. to be certain, or to be sure, i did one of them "google" things, and indeed yes, i was correct, volkswagen is a german company. which makes the passat even more really peculiar, for it is probably the single most french thing i have ever encountered.
above is the driver side of the car if you happen to be in a country which drives on the proper side of the road. many of you are not quite so blessed, though, and shall see the above as the passenger side, or whatever one would call such. i think in some instances that is called "shotgun". yes, the design is all sleek and stylish and other such nonsense, rather than making it all look like a car.
one of the places where they don't drive on the correct side of the road (if i recall right) is over in america. this must be a particularly sad burden on them, adding to their existing, well documented plight with lots of other matters. i highlight the americans in particular as another basic understanding (well, i lack the capacity for anything beyond basic) i have of them is that they have a most curious disposition, if not inclination, towards scatological and urinary related descriptions of stuff. how fortunate for them, and unfortunate for volkswagen, for i dare say that our friends in america would call this car the "p!ssant" rather than the passat. whatever one of them ants is.
somewhere in the past (as opposed for it to yet happen) there was a quite famous car review. in it, whoever did it silently observed one side of a car for quite a while. they appeared deep in thought, and were not disturbed. when satisfied with their thoughts, they walked around the car to give due consideration to the other. immediately the response was "oh no, they have done the same thing on this side too".
behold, then, for the above picture is proof entire that both sides of this car look relatively the same, which is to say that the faults exist on either. i would agree that a car with two different looking sides could be considered peculiar, but for those who like to hedge their bets (if that is right, or is it edge their bets?), for the passat if they had designed two vastly different looking sides, they would then have had every chance of at least 50% of the car being decent. an opportunity missed.
just about the only basic aspect of the design, i am sure you shall agree, which they have got even vaguely right is that the car is white. a very good friend, indeed he who taught me to drive, once taught me that if you have any value invested in a car, then always get a white one. nicks and scratches and damage are part of life on the road, alas. if you have any other colour car repairs shall always show, for they cannot match the age of a shade. white, however, is just white.
what about driving the car? that would be, i suppose, the main (conventional) purpose of making use of a car. as it turns out, it was not so that they made doing this in any way easy. i was given no warning that the modern ways of this particular vehicle stretched right the way to this being one of them "keyless" cars. i spent some time trying to work out how to get the key to pop out of the fob thing, and in doing so noticed that there was no ignition thing anyway. you have to, and this is symptomatic of our dumbed down world, press a button for it to start.
for those interested, the "start" button is upper top right, kind of, near the gearstick. surely it must be so that generations who taught people how to hotwire cars, or know how cool it looks to start a car with a key, shall lament this very sorry state of affairs.
much of what is wrong with the passat is visible in the above. there is no conventional or traditional handbrake, just some meaningless "flip" switch. and i do mean meaningless. for some reason whoever made this car decided that the car would know where and when to deploy a handbrake, not the driver of it. this is what happens when you allow the apple mentality, where everyone accepted apple would retain complete icontrol over whatever idevice you paid a lot of money for, to become normal. it isn't. presumably the future is one which is free of handbrake turns, then.
another glaring fault is found at the upper top right, across from the "start" button. earlier i mentioned how car makers think all want to plug in devices for vibes. it would also be that people plug in things like sat nav devices, or stuff to be powered or charged. whereas there is such a thing as a universal form of USB port for such, the passat, for some inexplicable reason, only has a "micro" USB port for you to plug stuff into. great, that is. much like how all EU television and video equipment has to have a sh!tty scart port because the french like it, well, as i (also) (or further) said earlier, everything about this car is exceedingly french, mon amis.
doesn't the car come with a built in sat nav, though, to address one of the things one might wish to plug in to the car but cannot because of the bonjour sacre bleu decision to have a micro USB port instead of a proper one? yes it does. i cannot show you a picture of it, for it only activates whilst driving, but here above is an image of the dash display screen where it would come up.
it really is an awful, rubbish, unfriendly and cumbersome satnav. to start with, when you type in an address - say, a street or perhaps a postcode - it immediately turns it into co-ordinates, you know that longitude and latitude stuff, and warns you that the place it thinks you mean is "off road". so it does not confirm you have entered it in right. one has to just hope it is correct.
going further, it is woeful in adjusting or being helpful. should you miss a turn, or simply cannot take the one it wishes for you to, it doesn't recalculate an alternate route, completely ignoring how it might be that you can't go down a road that is closed off (we always have roadworks at the moment). what it does instead, right, is just repeatedly shout "make a u turn now, make a u turn now, make a u turn now" at you. great, thanks for that.
yes, that's the driver seat above, although if you are viewing this in a place where they don't drive on the proper side of the road, that is what you would consider the passenger seat. no, it is no more comfortable than it looks. as in, it is exceedingly uncomfortable to sit in. the basic shape and dimensions suggest that they had in mind as future drivers six to eight year olds who were not at all fussy about such matters.
should you be at a point where you believe that, surely, there is no more folly, well, there is. for reasons i cannot begin to understand as being justified, this is one of them "new" seats what you can heat. i believe this is a common thing for cars now. why? just, why? who is it that has complained so much about their @rse being cold as they drive that heated seats in cars is now a thing? surely the great minds of our world who figured out how to make the chair in a car a little bit warm would have been better deployed solving (or resolving) any of the many other more pressing issues we face in our life? i mean, was it all, "well, we could have a look at fixing this corona plague thing, but look, a nice warm seat"?
that's the "main dash" display thing, then, with the date and the mileage deftly edited out with the blink of an eye, for such is not your concern. i have left the time, for you could have worked that out anyway, going on the (at least she tries and isn't Chris Evans (the sh!t British one not the excellent American one)) Zoe Ball Breakfast Show being tuned in. nice, at the least, that they left the car for me with Radio 2 on.
anything much wrong with the dash? not really, if you simply rather ignore it. for me, one of the most important things about driving is to concentrate, and not be distracted. all these new cars thrown ludicrous amounts of information at you all at once, or at least try to. just let me see the basics, please, without needing to press buttons again and again to get close to what i am looking for.
would i in any way, shape or form recommend or endorse the volkswagen passat then? have a guess, if you like, but no. the only possible reason i would buy one is if i had an insane amount of money, and there was someone i did not like, and somehow if i bought this for them they would be compelled, if not forced, to drive it. i am quite sure this was the only reason the car was manufactured in the first instance.
go on, then, yes, there is one redeeming feature. whilst it does not forgive all of the other matters, the boot is massive. should for some reason you wish to store two medium build adults in the boot of a vehicle, then you can do so with this. would they be comfortable? in considering the circumstances in which two people would be in the boot of a car, as reasonably so, in truth. certainly they would be more comfortable there than, say, sat in one of the half seats placed in the front of the car.
is the ability to store bodies in the back of a car important to me? not in any way, shape or form. i have no idea who you have been speaking to so as to contemplate such a question, but such claims are false, made of jealousy and spite in equal measure.
hope this as been of some use, or assistance, to you. should you be going to buy a new car (brand new or partially used), then i would suggest you ask the car dealer to show you a volkswagen passat. when they protest, and suggest showing you an actual, proper car, insist that they show you a passat. if they do, point at it, say "not that one", and move on to looking at cars which might actually be worth buying.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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