Gadgetory

I don't envy this car VW competes in perhaps the most competitive sector of automotive right now with the facade up against a court Camry Fusion Malibu Optima Sonata Altima yikes let's see how they do as we drive the 2014 Passat SEL premium and check the tech you're gonna see a theme come over and over again that makes this car distinctive and that is it's got beautiful design not audacious not swoopy not stand out but mature quality German looks and that's a key part of where it stands out in the market we'll see that inside as well now inside look around for the money you're not gonna find a more handsome car in a kind of a timeless high-quality look on the market anywhere I don't think anyone hits this level of really nice design now because we're in a fairly high trim Jetta it comes with an LCD touch based system with navigation scene it basically before it's nothing terribly new and it's certainly not head of the pack among the things that are key once you go to enter a destination you must do it by the touchscreen which works by the way while you're moving that's controversial but the voice command button over here does not drive address entry it's just for the phone system that's a little out of touch with today's technology and today's road safety sensitivities I also find the system at times very laggy as you bounce between either media choices or the map and the navigation sometimes it's very crisp and moves along well other times it seems to get lost for a moment I'm pleased to Howard they've gotten rid of this crazy planets around the Sun in her face they used to do where everything is a little ball around a center or makes no sense to me as information design this is better it's basically stacked rectangles and such but it's more organized the other screen in this car is the Little Helper screen between the two analog gauges and that's this crunchy looking Jaggi black-and-white LCD that just seems de classe and what is otherwise as I mentioned are really beautifully done cabin so this is where VW falls down they've done such a great job with the physical not such a great job with the virtual you can hook up VW carnet as your apps support it gives you OnStar like crash and safety stuff along with remote access to your car and some boundary and speed alerts you can keep an eye on your teenager it also brings along an enhanced level of Pio eye technology for destinations but in general there are no media apps going on here nothing you actually like no Yelp no open table no Bing search no Google search that's just not available here your media choices are fairly comprehensive I've got an SD card slot down here if you really want to use that we've got the ability to go from AM and FM and satellite radio all under band right here in addition to the SD card for other media you've got a hard drive you know I'm not a fan of those and thing called the MDI a multi device interface is this cable here it's a big VW Audi thing I currently have the iPod cable you could buy other types of cables to interface to your device I would happily trade this pigtail arrangement though for a good old standard USB jack and unload some of this stuff I don't care about like the SD card and the hard drive we have fender audio in this car which is fender brand that it's a Panasonic audio system and it's got a punchiness to it that's kind of the rubric around it being fender I feel it sounds fine it's not a stand out in the market by any stretch but it is an upgraded audio system that you won't be disappointed with Bluetooth calling has a nice set of memory presets up front and center on its main screen and of course we have bluetooth streaming as well nice touch with the bluetooth streaming is that when you turn the volume all the way down which is often laggy it goes into pause mode and then when you turn the volume back up which is very natural it undoes pause then goes back to play at this trim level and almost all levels of current Passats you get the rear camera thrown in for free no up no extra that's nice it's pretty basic no trajectory prediction no multiple views but it's a way to look out the back now under the hood here we've got some big changes in the facade it used to come typically with a two and a half liter inline five gas engine been way downsized 1.8 litre inline-four but now with turbo charging and direct injection a thoroughly modern motor the numbers 170 horsepower same as the much bigger outgoing engine 184 pound-feet of torque seven more than the larger outgoing engines that's a nice win a car that weighs 3,200 pounds now gets up to 260 in 7.8 seconds about a second faster than the outgoing car while delivering for 34 mpg in this configuration front-wheel drive only by the way which is going to be a problem for some drivers now on our SEL there's one choice on the gearbox some Passats come with a 5-speed manual this guy only comes with a six-speed Tiptronic with a pretty standard gate no paddles on the wheel if you want to shift yourself you leave it and drive and kick it to the right to get your column mounted shifting or pull it back to sport mode for an automatic but more energetic mode now just as our Passats screen interfaces are a bit dated so is it's complete lack of any driver assistance tech don't go looking for lane departure warning blind spot indication forward collision warning or even adaptive cruise control first thing I notice in this Passat is just a small amount of diesel engine noise coming in through the firewall problem with that is this isn't a diesel so that's not good when you're really on the throttle the engine has a nice growl when you're going down the freeway it's basically inaudible but around town when you're on and off the power whoo it's got kind of a bad diesel note there really blows up the otherwise very tasteful styling and environment of this car now the power is Jekyll and Hyde sometimes the power is right there ready to go and this is just a great Torquay smooth thrusting car other times you catch it absolutely flat-footed you go to the pedal you want some power now to pass or do something and it's like the engine was shut off for part of a second notice about the transmission in this car you've got the drive mode as I mentioned a shiftable mode in a sport mode but you don't really ever blend shiftable and sport which i think is kind of unfortunate what I would like is to go to sport mode and then have my paddles up here for shift ability but you've got to get a different trim level Passat to get the combination of paddles and automatic I hit this car high marks for its handling I think it's a very well struck balance between a sporty feel and like active feel and excellent ride quality it does both I think very well if I had to nitpick the handling at all it's the new ish for this car full electric power steering which i think is it's over assisted almost all the time they need to dial that back or make it more intelligent at higher speeds okay pricing uh Passats pretty easy VW is doing a lot of trim level pricing now not so much Alucard options so an SEL premium is thirty to one delivered it does well as a handling car and is one that has excellent design inside and out not so much as a technology standard-bearer as you saw you're missing a whole lot of app integration connected car features and driver assistance technology you buy this car because of generally excellent VW handling in an everyday sense not so much because the power delivery and not because it's a technology showcase but it's got excellent German design