Volkswagen Passat Estate - long-term review

The auto industry loves to innovate, but its hit rate is mixed. Seatbelts and airbags, now they’re great. But other times designers and engineers meddle unnecessarily, which gives us stuff like the McLaren MP4-12C’s touch-sensitive pads on its swish dihedral doors. They needed a Freemasons-style secret handshake to work, were soon dropped for little buttons, and ultimately the company went back to that thing that was fine in the first place, which was door handles.

Other changes are more pervasive and persistent, like the industry’s love for touch-sensitive surfaces. Volkswagen was one of the early adopters when, under the Dieselgate cloud, it rushed to reinvent itself. In the desperation for a paradigm shift, new tech ideas were rushed through to the halo ID.3, a car touted as a reinvention of the Golf for the electric era.

But just like when your laptop’s shiny new software update seems to offer little more than an unwelcome font change, so the ditching of physical buttons annoyed and distracted customers from whatever good the ID.3 offered.

The new UI was bad because the touch-sensitive ‘pads’ on the wheel just didn’t work, while the temperature ‘slider’ controls – placed at the base of the new central touchscreen – were unlit. How did that ever get through R&D? Surely someone at VW tested a prototype at night, and having hunted around in the dark to whack up the heat, would have fed back that they were, err, crap.

Moreover, in ditching its buttons, VW scuttled something it did best in the industry. Its air-con dials, usually just in front of the gearstick, and its steering wheel buttons, were a paragon of clarity.

Don’t think VW was only messing up its new electric ID models either. In another life (aka at another magazine) I ran a long-term VW Arteon, and its only fault was the lack of an estate version. When the Shooting Brake popped up with the facelift, the man-maths started plotting when in its colossal depreciation would make it affordable – until I spotted the facelift also ushered in those touch-sensitive steering wheel ‘pads’ and its own set of silly temp sliders buried down by the transmission tunnel. Dream over.

Don’t let me tar VW solely with this brush either. Many have been afflicted, even Ferrari, which ditched not only steering wheel buttons but that wonderful emotive red starter button. It has backtracked, reintroducing physical steering wheel controls for new models and offering a retrofit steering wheel for existing cars.

Which brings us to this Passat, which joy of joys, has buttons on its steering wheel after a VW-wide about-face. And they work, and work so well. There’s a clear lineage back to the Mk6 Golf’s multi-functional wheel, and added functionality for tech like adaptive cruise control has been neatly integrated. Please VW, don’t ever change them again.

And, while VW hasn’t bought back the old air-con dials, the temperate sliders are now lit and at least visible after 4pm in January…