R Line 150 6 months in mini review

[MattB247]

Hi, thought I'd put some thoughts down after 6 months in my Passat.

Build quality is still pretty good, I'm hearing a little squeak on the front of the dash every now and then but I'm not sure if it's my imagination or a fault after reading some creaking threads! Even with the 19" wheels and lowered sports suspension the ride quality is fine, and the chassis feels taut - it's a large car but never feels like it wallows.

The 150 diesel is just enough too - I'd prefer the extra grunt of the 190 but 90% of the time I'm ok with it, but I do need that extra change down to overtake at times.

ACC is useful, sometimes gets a bit lost on curves and retards the throttle a bit for no apparent reason but I'm getting used to it. Same with the auto braking - a couple of times it has hoofed on the brakes for no apparent reason when the car in front is a good 50 yards away. I tend not to use the speed limiter too much as it seems to make the throttle really mushy and unresponsive. Neither are as good as the system I had on my Volvo but I'd rather have them than not.

Nav Pro routing is still a bit squirrely - it'll suggest routes that are 3-4 miles longer on a 7 mile route but at least I have the option to override it and it'll reroute sensibly half the time. I wish when you hit the Traffic button and it showed you incidents on your route it would give you an "avoid" option though, also an "avoid town centres" option. Audio quality of the standard system is ok, not great, but I listen to the radio a lot so it's not so much of a big deal to have had the Dynaudio.

VW dealers are still a bit iffy - I had to have all the chrome trim around the windows replaced from new as it was oxidising: the dealer said they were doing me a favour as it wasn't a warranty item, which saved me an argument with them! I've still got an outstanding problem with only being able to put 10,000 tracks on a 256gb SDXC card before it says Indexing Error - they've been looking into this for 4 months now and I'm getting annoyed I keep having to chase them for updates.

I still think the standard equipment is a bit stingy - having to pay extra for LED lights on a £32k car is ludicrous, especially at the price of them. Even if I had sprung for them, I'd be annoyed I had halogen DRL's which is, again, a back step in technology: would it have been too hard for VW to install LED bulbs in there?? I also do miss a rear wiper, but that's from coming from years in hatchbacks - nothing I can do about that. Full leather would have been nice, but stuck with the half leather as £1700 is a bit rich!

Connecting a mobile phone can be a bit of a pain, especially if you have two phones and the one that you're connecting isn't the one that was connected when you turned the engine off - it seems to spend a lot of time looking for it, I just change them over in the manual settings now.

Overall, enjoying the car - no real issues and it's still great to drive!

Forgot to say: glovebox may be cooled but it's too damned small to fit any sandwiches/ drink etc in!

[macker6464]

MattB247 cheers for the review, very helpful.

I have recently ordered a Passat Estate R-Line 2.0 TDI BMT 150PS 6-speed Manual 5 Door in Crimson Red Metallic with Black/Titan Black leather.
Quite a few extras added on too. Current production week is early Jan so fingers crossed for early next year.

I have the standard 18” wheels and don’t have the sports suspension.
Extras are: Discover Pro, heated seats, heated screen, electric front seats, telephone prep, electric tailgate, tyre pressure monitoring, park assist, lane assist, keyless entry, LED lights with dynamic cornering, rear camera and a few other bits.
I’ll post more when I know more.

Hopefully be very nice after 9 years of my Passat B6 Estate!
Cheers
Macker6464