Volkswagen Passat Estate - long-term review

Due to the unique way deadlines and publishing schedules work, I’m writing about how my Christmas holidays went – but to avoid the report feeling outdated or tinged with nostalgia, let’s actually not mention presents or question why I packed the family into the Passat and spent a fortnight visiting parents, parents-in-law or Center Parcs.

So, for a reason I can’t otherwise fathom, I randomly packed my wife, our kids, and lots of plastic toys wrapped in paper into the Passat, and spent two weeks not sleeping in my own bed.

The packing part comes easy to the Passat, as the boot, to use a technical term, is bloody massive. Aero requirements and/or a designer’s flourish mean it’s not quite the square box of an old Volvo, but it’s bigger (at 690 litres) than the Swede’s recently discontinued V90, bigger than a Mercedes E-Class Estate too, with only the Skoda Superb Estate (with which it’s twinned) on par. That means your typical big suitcases can fit one atop another length-ways, leaving plenty of space for all the other boxes, soft holdalls and plastic bags that seem to appear only after my wife declares “so that’s everything you need to fit in the car”.

Once packed, the Passat is equally adept at the touring part of any big trip. Not least because on the motorway (i.e. away from a diet of short school runs) consumption improves by at least a quarter. Two tanks at the start of this month (well, December, but let’s keep this report’s subterfuge going…) averaged a smidge under 30mpg but freed to cruise we manged a smidge under 40mpg. That’s 600 miles on a tank – of petrol, no less – and a world away from the 200-250 I was getting from a Porsche Macan Electric last time I went to see the ‘rentals. Plus that figure doesn’t go down as the temperature drops.

On the subject of petrol vs EV, without the need to charge I couldn’t schlep off for an hour’s peace from the in-laws in a random car park, while at Center Parcs there was no option of a dedicated EV parking space near the entrance. On the plus side, the charging didn’t work last time I took an EV to Center Parcs anyway, and the Passat more than doubles the real-world range of most EVs.

The only advantage for an EV in this narrow-use case study? The lack of cabin pre-conditioning in the Passat, as for those who haven’t been, CP is a car-free zone during your visit, so on the morning of the en-masse departure, a chilly walk to collect the car was followed by a chilly wait for it to defrost.

Still, that minor grumble has done nothing to dissuade that neither an SUV, an EV, or a combination of the two, is necessary when Passat is still thoroughly fit for purpose.