But you can't watch it go by... revisited

Back in July last year, I mentioned that someone at work had just taken delivery of a new Audi A4 estate. It's always exciting when someone at work gets a new car, so you can have a good look around and say all the things that you might not say in a dealer showroom. I was disappointed in the Audi, because it felt like a very small car inside, and I thought the interior was a bit cheap-looking, for a so-called quality car.

Sitting inside the thing is way more important than the way it looks on the outside.


When I was shopping for my last new car a couple of years ago, I sat inside a Mazda 6. It had been well reviewed and I thought at the time that it looked great. But I sat inside and looked at the dashboard area, which is, you know, the bit you're going to see the most, and I knew I'd never be able to live with it. The middle of it had this silvery, fake hammered aluminium look that just seemed tacky, like some demented 9-year-old boy had been let loose in the design studio.

And it's interesting that, all this time later, I no longer like the looks of the Mazda 6 from the outside. Those rear "white look" light clusters (which are common on a whole range of different cars - some of them very expensive ones) just look shit to me now. It's like the car is covered with gold rings, medallions, and chest hair. Things like that are the Gold Taps of the car industry.

The thing I've always liked about VW designs is that they are - wisely - incredibly conservative. They don't go for the striking looks of your Renaults and your Citroëns, and they can indeed look positively dull when first released. A prime example of this is the Touran mini MPV, which is positively generic. But a VW will continue to look generic throughout its model lifetime, whereas your trendy fashion-victim cars look dated very quickly. Such are the vicissitudes of trends.


The new Passat is edging towards trendy. Look at the rear light cluster above: almost as tacky as the Mazda version. Overall, I'm not sure about the looks of the new one, though I like the estate version better. On the other hand, it's edging towards looking like a stretched Golf, which is unfortunately what it is (the old Passat, the one I have, was based on the Audi A6 chassis - which is why it's bigger than an Audi A4 - and the new one is based on Golf chassis and mechanicals).

So someone at work just got a new Passat (saloon), and I went for a spin in it yesterday as it's a company car.

Thinking about it overnight, I'm very disappointed. It was in my mind that I might get a new estate some time next year, and now I just don't know. One striking new feature is the electronic hand-brake, which you notice immediately when you get in, because the space between the driver and passenger seats is now free.

But first things first. The "key" is now a trendy push-into-the-dashboard affair, and you start the car by pushing it like a button. Oh dear. I'd accept this as a Good Thing if the thing you had to carry around in your pocket was smaller than my current, more traditional key. But it's not. It's not even the same size. It's bigger. So you have this great fat lump of metal and plastic to carry around. Bollocks to that.

So then you've got this electronic hand-brake, which is a button on the dashboard, to the right of the steering wheel. A while ago on the roadrage blog, I mentioned my opinion that left-hand-drive cars are a crime against nature, because it feels more natural - to anyone - to use your left leg and left hand to change gear. For the same reason, positioning the hand-brake release button on the right feels counter-intuitive and wrong. It's bad enough pulling out of a space in the peace and quiet of the car park, but to be at a traffic light in heavy traffic, gah!

I'm sure it's something you'll get used to, but it feels like a stupid and unnecessary gimmick, a fashion accessory that we'll laugh at in a few years. This is especially true when you realise what they've done with the space liberated by the absent hand-brake lever. Nothing, really. An arm rest with some space in it for your in-car junk. Whoop-de-do. None of these fashionable cubby holes are ever big enough to be useful, so they just get ignored, or filled with sweet wrappers and receipts or something. That and your cup holders gets you nil points.

Big fucking deal: drink while you drive. Genius. All they need to do is fit a commode or an in-car catheter, and you can keep driving till you fall asleep at the wheel and crash into the central reservation.

More leg- and elbow-room is what I want from a big car, not a fucking cup holder and a waste paper basket.

So what else? This was a basic model, and it felt cheap and nasty inside; plastics not up to the quality I'd expect from VW, and the middle bit of the dashboard: oh dear. Again. They've gone all Mazda, with a great expanse of fake aluminium and/or fake aluminium-coloured fake carbon fake fibre. It looks very, very, nasty indeed.

The seats no longer get adjusted by a quick-release lever under the seat, but by "fancy" electronic buttons. And of course, it's so, so, slow, that you immediately wish you had a quick release - and manual - lever, so you could make the adjustment in half a second and drive away. Yet more pointless gadgetry, designed to make the plebs feel like they're in a "luxury" motor, with the kind of features you'd find in a BMW or Mercedes. Except the plastic switches feel cheap and fragile to touch, and the servo motor comes from a Hornby railway set or something.

I'm hugely disappointed, and can only hope that this nastiness is not present on the slightly better specced models further up the range. But, you know what? I doubt it.