The sensible choice

When your daily commute to work takes about an hour and a half, no matter how much you love driving, and no matter how much you’d rather have a better handling car to a more comfortable ride, you’d eventually wish, pray or if you are intelligent enough, buy a comfortable car.

A car that has a quick but light steering for less effort while parking or steering away from behind a broken down truck or simply exiting a wrong lane from a standstill.

You’d also want a car which is easy to see out of for a less mentally tiring drive, especially when you have motorcyclists and auto rickshaw guys coming up behind you unannounced. And of course, your ride must have cushy seats and a comfy ride.

Small exterior dimensions help as well. My commute too takes about an hour and a half on a good day, and my ride these days ticks almost all the above mentioned bits. Almost, because, it’s anything but small and honestly, it’s also not the easiest to see out of. But boy is it comfortable. It has a supremely quiet cabin, a truly comfortable low speed ride quality, an easy to use steering and one of the best front seats I have been in, in a very long time.

Besides being comfortable, these are also cooled; perfect for the hot and sultry Mumbai climate these days. I am talking about the new Volkswagen Passat. And so far, it’s proving to be quite a great commute partner. More on the car and its ups and downs in the coming issues as we put it through its paces in the coming months.

This fortnight, we tell you how it is to live with the Passat in a bustling city like Mumbai

I have a very long commute these days. And courtesy Mumbai’s broken roads, unnecessary bottle necks and countless traffic signals, it takes me upto two hours to cover less than 40km one way. Needless to say, I have been spending a lot of time in the car.

But surprisingly, being cooped up inside a near stationary vehicle has not driven me up the wall as yet, mainly because it’s not gotten inconvenient yet. That Mumbai motorists like order and follow rules and lane driving helps immensely, but it’s mainly down to the Passat. The automatic transmission, for starters, is bliss. It goes about upshifts and downshifts so quietly, one has to pay attention to catch it in the act.

There’s also an Auto Hold function which allows you to get your foot off the brake once the car has stopped even though the car remains in D or drive. It helps hugely at a long traffic light. The function disengages the moment you get on the throttle and this is seamlessly done too.

I love the seats as well. Not only are these air conditioned, so there’s no issue of a sweaty back in the sultry Mumbai weather, but these are cushy and supportive too. The driving position is great and there’s so much info on the MFD that you can keep playing with it while at traffic and never get bored.

We are still not happy about two things though, particular to a city commute. The visibility is an issue and can lead to unnecessary fatigue at times.

Also, the brake progression could be better. There’s little bite initially, but towards the end it gets so ferocious, one constantly lives with the fear of being rear-ended.

So far I have managed to battle both these shortcomings, even if it means I take longer than I should. But overall, we feel the Passat ‘package’ with its drivetrain, its soft suspension setup, its comfort features and the like, is beautifully suited for city commute, even if you choose to drive it yourself.

We deliver the verdict on the Volkswagen Passat's ability as a long distance travel companion

Every car evokes a special sentiment. If you have a proper SUV, you’d be itching to hit a dirt trial. If it were a sportscar in your garage, you’d look for excuses to make it to a track day. And, if you have something large, expensive and luxurious like the Passat, the last thing on your mind would be to hit the maddening Mumbai peak hour traffic, everyday of the week. But I did, as I mentioned last fortnight, and the car felt surprisingly humble to manoeuvre. The itch though remained because for all the Passat packs in, it had to be a good highway cruiser.

So, on what was a very rainy day, we took it to Ganpatipule, a religious hamlet on the seashore just off highway NH17 that connects Mumbai and Goa. And boy did the Passat impress us! Now, with rains, roads in Maharashtra take a serious beating. And if you choose to take state highways instead of the national highways, like we did, the road situations gets worse still.

But the Volkswagen, with its cushy ride and a decent ground clearance made the journey completely hasslefree. It’s also a very quiet car on the inside, so road noise, all the honking and even wind noise at over three digit speeds, hardly seeps in making the travel that much more serene and tireless.

What adds to the Passat’s long distance cruising ability is its comfy seating all round and of course, the lovely engine and the perky DSG gearbox. Being an automatic means, there are two less things to do while driving, which reduces fatigue. And with that 170bhp engine packing in healthy torque all across the rev band, getting up to speed or overtaking is child’s play.

The only downside of sorts, is the car’s dynamics. The Passat rolls around bends and with very little car-driver communication, it’s not the most enjoyable to drive on a twisty road. And, if the road is bumpy or broken, things just get worse. It also tends to lose its composure if subjected to quick direction changes besides understeering more than we would have liked. Overall though, the Passat impresses as a highway package. So much so that soon after, we drove it down to Delhi from Mumbai.

The green technology on the Passat, Start-stop, is quite charming. But, one does need to get used to it

It’s one of the more difficult features to get used to in a car. Stop at a signal, and the car dies on you. Stop to let a pedestrian cross and the car dies on you again. Stop to pick up your mate, and the car dies yet again. It doesn’t matter if the car has stopped for seconds or minutes. It’s obviously not the most comforting feature, is Start-Stop. Till you have spent a few days experiencing it that is.

And I have on our long term Passat. The Volkswagen is, by the way, the only car in its segment (and some segments above as well) to get this technology. It’s a fuel saving technology, but we will get to that later. For now, I am completely charmed by it. Imagine, you stop at a traffic light, a zebra crossing or anywhere at all, and while everyone around you is busy idling and wasting fuel and dirtying the environment, you sit there with a smile knowing you are better than the rest. You aren’t wasting anything and are in fact making a contribution towards saving the earth for your children and grandchildren. It’s a fantastic feeling, even if you are a die-hard motorist.

What makes the feature even more endearing is that it requires nothing from you. You don’t have to turn the car off or on. You just apply the brakes, come to a stop, hold the brake in position and it’s off. Release the pressure on the brake, and the Passat’s engine with a slight shake is alive and kicking.

However, there’s an issue with Start-Stop technology in a country like India, especially in a season where temperatures in the day hover over 40 degrees. On a hot day, the system just refuses to work mainly because it’s so hot that the car cannot do without remaining alive to keep the cabin cool. So, the only solution is to turn off the air con before coming to a stop, manually, and then put it on as you get moving again. I have been doing it and yes, the car does get a tad warm while you sit for the traffic to clear, but at least your conscience is clean.

We explore the new Passat’s magical self parking system

Well, if a car can park itself there isn’t another word for it but magic, particularly, when this feature is missing even on the most expensive cars in India. But our Passat has it, and it is quite the magician as well. It all happens quite effortlessly. First, the driver has to press the park assist button on the front central tunnel and drive leisurely past parking spots. As soon as the car finds a slot big enough for it to fit in, it indicates and then guides you through the procedure.

All the driver has to do then is to shift from Drive to Reverse or visa versa, feed in a bit of throttle and stay alert on the brake. The car steers itself and takes the pain of minding the obstacles as it manoeuvres itself into the slot. And it can do this both for parallel parking as well as perpendicular slots.

So far we have tried it numerous times and in a variety of situations and it has worked well, almost every time. On most occasions, it has been a life saver. And it also fits itself into tight spots you'd never even attempt. It does feel a tad intimidating when you first use it. And it might continue to feel that way for a while, but once you get the hang of it, you'd attempt to use it almost everywhere.

Now, we say it has worked almost every time because there are a few situations where it finds itself completely lost. Take perpendicular parking at a busy market area for instance. No one really parks their cars straight. So, if the Passat does pick a slot and the two cars on its side are not parallel to each other, it gets a tad confused.

It doesn’t know which car it should align itself with, but it tries. And then finally, it completely gives up mid way through the procedure. It is fine when no one’s looking, because you can manoeuvre it into the spot on the quiet. But, if you are showing off in front of friends (which you’d admit, one has to with a feature like this), you do look a little silly.

Another issue with the assist system is its inability to pick up low kerbs, ditches or rocks. So if you haven’t scanned the area you want to park into first, there is a good chance you’ll hit or climb over something. In our case, we have climbed over kerbs and rocks but thankfully, none were large enough to damage the car.

There's however no denying that the park assist feature is a great system. It’s convenient, smart and a fantastic show off tool as well.

But, before you completely begin trusting it, we suggest, you carefully get to know its limitations first, as we have.

The Passat is a luxury business sedan. But with 170bhp on tap and a superb gearbox, this sober looking car has the ability to excite

About a month or so back on my drive from Mumbai to Delhi in the Passat, on the section that connects Udaipur and Chittorgarh, an over enthusiastic Audi A4 owner thought he’d show off. So, there I was driving peacefully at about 100kmph when this white Audi pulls alongside, cuts me off and takes off.

I continue to stick to my speed. Two bends later, there he is again, ambling along and as soon as I get past him, he cuts me off again. This was beginning to get very dangerous. So next time I see him, I pull alongside and give the Passat the beans. He does the same to his A4. But surprise, surprise. Even though both of us were running VW Groups famed 2-litre diesel engines, my Passat left him in the dust.

He tried catching up, flying over unseen crests and grounding his front lip on every landing, but to no avail. Minutes later, there was no sign of him. And no, the moral of the story isn’t that I was the better driver, but my car, even though it displaced the same engine capacity, had an almost 30bhp advantage.

But, that’s only one of the things that are great about this engine. It’s also efficient, very driveable and when driven sedately, extremely quiet inside the cabin. We love the DSG gearbox as well. Drive in auto mode and shifts are hardly perceptible. Drive it with the paddle shifters and it gives you as much control on revs and gears as a manual; only it’s quicker and a lot less effort to use. The Passat's drivetrain then is one tremendous unit, and something that makes the car very desirable indeed.