Very Good Indeed

My wife recently got a 2008 Volkswagen Passat Wagon, Lux Edition. This was a downsizing from the family minivan and a significant upgrade in vehicle.

The Lux Edition is the highest optioned of the Passat's (though we were looking for only a Komfort edition, we got a good lease on the Lux this summer and I'm glad we upgraded). It has the real leather seats (though I think VW's fake leather is great and wouldn't have cared), the Dynaudio stereo system (awesome), heated seats (gotta have that in colorado) and navigation (never had it before and I'm a convert).

First off, the driving dynamics of the vehicle (even in wagon form) is very good. The 2.0 turbo engine has plenty of power...more than most people would use it for...and mated with the 6 speed transmission the car is spirited, stable, confidence inspiring and fun. Even the wagon. It does have some turbo lag at take-off and very low speeds...but the 6 speed transmission otherwise does a great job of keeping it in it's power band so you seldom feel the turbo spooling up.

We took our family of 4 and a weekend's worth of gear to the mountains (from Denver to Summit County) last weekend and the car had plenty of power for the task. This particular car has the paddle shifters and keeping it in it's power band in the manual shifting mode was a piece of cake...even fun. For the most part the car was happy pulling about 2,300 rpm in 5th gear at about 72mph. Returned almost 26mpg for the uphill drive as well. Outstanding on both fronts.

My father would say that this car has 'long legs' as it absolutely loves to cruise on the highway. It is stable, quiet and has plenty of passing power when cruising in the 70 to 80mph range and great gas mileage. I always take this car when I need to go anywhere on the highway.

This car does much better than it's rated gas mileage for us, regularly returning 21 mpg city and always in the 31 to 34mpg range on the highway (driving 70 to 75mph). That's quite surprise and a welcome one these days.

I'm 6'4" tall and I can sit in the drivers seat perfectly comfortably with headroom to spare (sunroof included) and then get out and get in the seat behind the driver seat comfortably too. Very good...better than most other cars I get in. Good storage with the seats up and great storage with them down. The cabin has a very nice feel to it as well...more expensive than the car is IMO.

Overall we're very happy indeed.