Volkswagen Passat, 2006: The Weekly Driver

Golf courses to restaurants, the quaintness of thewinding, more subtle state routes of approaching
small towns to the Pacific Ocean, there's nothingthe peninsula.With the exception of the wheelbase,
quite like a visit to the Monterey Peninsula. But thewhich is the same as the 1998-2005 sedans,
200-mile drive from Sacramento is also an idealVolkswagen redesigned its midsize car for '06.
route for testing cars. The high-speed interstateThe body has been extended three inches in
to narrow city streets, there's no place to hide alength and it's wider, too.For the first time, a
car's faults and there are plenty of opportunitiesnavigation system, steering-linked, bi-xenon
for a vehicle to showcase its best attributes.Myheadlamps and either manual or automatic
weekly test drive on a recent visit to thesix-speed transmissions, instead of five, are all
Monterey Peninsula was the 2006 Volkswagenstandard. Front-wheel and VW's 4-Motion all-wheel
Passat. It's available in three versions, thedrive are also both available, with my tester
4-cylinder Value Edition and 2.0T (turbocharged)including the front-wheel drive option.The V6
models and the higher performance V6 marketedPassat with its various options can exceed
as the sports model.I drove the 2.0T, which was$35,000. But my Passat for the week was more
plenty sporty and responsive on the high-speed,than $10,000 less.
often crowd open roads of Interstate 5 to the