2016 VW Passat Sel V6

Introduction—welcome to the Family Car.

- Michael Febbo

What you see here is European Car’s new long-term, 2016 VW Passat. Some of you may remember when I took the reigns of this magazine a little more than two years ago; I inherited a similar long-term Passat nearing the end of its one-year loan. I found the car hobbled with an air-suspension kit that had not only ruined the ride quality, but at the same time managed to ruin the handling. On top of that, it took up a decent amount of trunk space and leaked; there were no positive aspects to it. Normally, I envy multitaskers, but I had zero love for this setup’s ability to take most of the positive attributes of the Passat and ruin them simultaneously.

With the couple of short months I had left with that Passat, I managed to save some face by installing coilovers, a performance tire and wheel package, along with some really easy power mods for the 1.8t, which was brand new at the time. It only took a few well-chosen modifications and we were turning faster laps around our figure-8 test than the last BMW 5-series we had tested.

The Passat has been refreshed for 2016; the base engine is still the 1.8t but this time our long-termer is powered by the 280hp, 3.6L VR6 and comes in the top-of-the-line SEL Premium trim. While the base 1.8t might be an easier way to show gains, the VR starts out faster than our modded four cylinder had become, but more on that later.