Volkswagen Passat review

VW’s respectable and conservative hauler of families (who may well have those same characteristics) enters its eighth generation. The look might be evolutionary but pretty well every component is new. Indeed, beneath, it moves onto VW’s latest MQB kit. 

Compared with the last Passat, the wheelbase has grown for extra room but overall length has been admirably constrained and the weight has dropped usefully. Engines are new to the Passat, and for the UK they’re all diesels, except for an intriguing petrol-electric plug-in hybrid called GTE.