Nice big saloon (VW Passat 1.8 SE 20V Turbo Saloon)

Member Name: karlg

Product:	VW Passat 1.8 SE 20V Turbo Saloon
Date:	30/10/09 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: big boot space, nippy

Disadvantages: eats juice quickly

I was about to review this last week, but my passat then decided to die on me! Basically what happened is the timing belt went on it and caused major damage to engine and valves and basically was going to cost neatl 1k to fix so i decided to offload it for a measly £80!!!

However, that was probably my fault for not getting it serviced or checked out so i wont mark it down too much for this mishap.

The Drive.

Driving the passat is lovely, its gear changes are smooth, the suspension is good and its good on the motorway. The seats are comfortable and easily adjusted to suit your driving needs, you have plenty of vision throughout the car, both looking forward and in the rear, so even though its a biggish car its easier to park with the vision you get. You can get good speeds in the passat aswell, think the fastest i got up to was 132mph. It gets up to 60mph quickish aswell, ill put the spec up later in the review.

The Reliability.

This is a section i cant comment much on as i onyl had the car for 7 months, however the 7 month i had it, it seemed fine until the recent timing belt incident, it is recommened that you change them every 70k, the car i had had done 90k and im not sure if it had been changed previously or not so a lesson learned there.

The Interior

Its quite a nice spacious area inside, there are plenty of storage spots aswell, 4 cup holders in total, an arm rest for the driver which also has storage inside it, i used that for a torch and sunglasses aswell as some loose change so its not on show, nice little touch that. Other storages included under the radio, under the steering wheel, the side of the windows and the passenger compartment, which is a nice size aswell.
The seats are comfortable in cloth, there is a vanity mirror on both the passenger and drivers sun visors with a light for the night time aswell. There is a 6 cd mulitchanger in the boot with an fm radio and cassette in the front, the controls are easy to use and the sound was very good for a standard sound system. The boot is very large aswell and i could fit my golf clubs and trolley in there without a problem, aswell as the weekly shopping.

The performance

The passat i had is a 1.7 turbo and it could move quick for a saloon car. It was fast on the motorway when changing lanes and overtaking other cars. The brakes are very good aswell, although not ABS they were still very solid and stopped quickly and efficiently. The downside here is that it eats juice, i reckon i was getting about 23-25 mpg even with motorway driving each day.

The Spec.

Air-Bag, Air-Conditioning, Alloy Wheels, Anti-Lock Brakes, Central Locking, Electric Mirrors, Electric Windows, Passenger Air-bag, Power Steering


Overall.

A well built machine, drives well and if serviced and looked after well will last you a long time, shame mine didnt however!

Summary: a nice saloon but service it regularly

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