2004-2005 Volkswagen Passat TDI: Used Car Reminder
Posted by Doug DeMuro in Used Car Reminder on | 3 comments
You know who really annoys me? Those people who go to Europe and rent some diesel car that gets 226 miles per gallon, then return to the states and complain about WHY DON’T CAR COMPANIES SELL THOSE HERE???? or maybe the even better THE CAR COMPANIES ARE IN BED WITH THE OIL COMPANIES TO KEEP FUEL ECONOMY DOWN!!!!
The truth is that the only reason those European cars manage to get 226 miles per gallon, or 470 miles per gallon, or whatever those people claim to their friends, is that they have about 47 horsepower and do 0-to-60 in the same amount of time as a tug boat.
Seriously: Just a few years ago, I rented a Ford Fiesta in Europe with an 81-horsepower four-cylinder engine. This thing had the passing power of a musk ox. And I returned home to discover it wasn’t even the least powerful model they sold. There is actually a fifty-nine horsepower version of the same car, which would probably lose a drag race to a Vespa hauling a file cabinet.
I bring all this up because the 2004-05 Passat TDI is one of those rare cars they tried to bring from Europe for boosted fuel economy. Most people don’t realize there was a diesel version of this car, but it existed after Volkswagen customers insisted they wanted better gas mileage.
So Volkswagen brought us the Passat TDI, all 134 horsepower of it, which was 35 horses less than most four-cylinder midsize sedans and 100 horses below most V6s. The result? A respectable 27 mpg city and 38 mpg highway… and a 0-to-60 time of 10.5 seconds. Naturally, no one bought this car, and the diesel didn’t live to see the Passat’s 2006 redesign.
But the ’04-’05 Passat TDI certainly exists, and you can still buy a used example. Just don’t complain about the acceleration.
3 Responses to “ “2004-2005 Volkswagen Passat TDI: Used Car Reminder”
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The used values of these are outrageous. If you can manage to find one with only 150k miles for sale, they’ll still want 50% more than a B5 with a V6 or 1.8T and half the miles.
I completely agree with you. I recently had the “why don’t they bring this diesel car over here” conversation with someone. It took me an hour to explain to them that if it were here, they wouldn’t buy it. Plus, the cost premium of these low volume models often means that you would have to drive it for 10 years to break even. I’m all for diesels here, but until they are main stream here and aftertreatment costs go down, they are not going to be a lucrative purchase.
Further more, this particular car the person was raving about was in Britain where they use the imperial gallon, which is equal to roughly 1.2 U.S. gallons, so the numbers are completely skewed.
While it may have taken 10.5 seconds to reach 60, the beauty of the diesel motor is that it felt much quicker! I took one of these in trade a few years back and used it as a driver, before selling it for some astronomically high price (at least when you consider what the non-diesels go for).
Way more interesting that you average Cam-cord alternative!