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I'd have to agree. The R36 is the best all round car I have ever driven.
Originally posted by FSI 220
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This wasn't what I had in mind when I kicked this thread off.... "What you would have done differently" when buying your Passat....
But what the hey....
I have stepped out of turbo Subarus into the Passat after four long years walking through the valley of despair. (Toyota Kluger AWD, simultaneously the best car I have ever owned, and the least involved/most boring appliance I have ever driven... which makes it the perfect wife's car - safe, big, strong, reliable, set and forget for 400k km - unlike a volksie).
The Passat is equally the quickest humane car I have owned (on par with my boostmodded WRX), but feels much slower, much much slower. half of it is in the box. And yes, I eat my words from a few months ago...
You don't get that feeling of vertigo you get with boost, shift, boost, shift, boost, from a manual turbo... you don't even get that manual throwback of the neck on a manual NA shifting from the top RPM into the meat of the torque curve... the revs drop so quickly and the box shifts it just winds out.
My theory is that the gearbox is so good that each shift gains an average dumb punter like me a quarter of a second per shift... so if it is three shifts to 100, it would place a Passat as a 6.25 car... that would be slower than my REX was and about right for the KW graph numbers...
I also think the torque curve of a Passat is constrained, it doesn't look like a natural curve...
Also, when you own a turbo, you learn how to drive it... you don't get to know one intimately with a drive here and there... And if you really want to live with a dog, own a carby fed, ported, atmo, 13b in a 78 mazda coupe! (and try driving that in the rain!)
But what the hey....
I have stepped out of turbo Subarus into the Passat after four long years walking through the valley of despair. (Toyota Kluger AWD, simultaneously the best car I have ever owned, and the least involved/most boring appliance I have ever driven... which makes it the perfect wife's car - safe, big, strong, reliable, set and forget for 400k km - unlike a volksie).
The Passat is equally the quickest humane car I have owned (on par with my boostmodded WRX), but feels much slower, much much slower. half of it is in the box. And yes, I eat my words from a few months ago...
You don't get that feeling of vertigo you get with boost, shift, boost, shift, boost, from a manual turbo... you don't even get that manual throwback of the neck on a manual NA shifting from the top RPM into the meat of the torque curve... the revs drop so quickly and the box shifts it just winds out.
My theory is that the gearbox is so good that each shift gains an average dumb punter like me a quarter of a second per shift... so if it is three shifts to 100, it would place a Passat as a 6.25 car... that would be slower than my REX was and about right for the KW graph numbers...
I also think the torque curve of a Passat is constrained, it doesn't look like a natural curve...
Also, when you own a turbo, you learn how to drive it... you don't get to know one intimately with a drive here and there... And if you really want to live with a dog, own a carby fed, ported, atmo, 13b in a 78 mazda coupe! (and try driving that in the rain!)
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