Volkswagen Arteon 0979
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Volkswagen Arteon 1018
Michael Taylor16 Jun 2017
REVIEW

Volkswagen Arteon 2017 Review

If the Passat is too dull and the Passat CC is too old, Volkswagen has a new answer
Model Tested
Volkswagen Arteon 2.0-litre TSI R-Line
Review Type
International Launch
Review Location
Hannover, Germany

What is it that makes a premium car? Is it the car itself? Is it the badge and the company behind it? Is it the looks? Volkswagen is about to find out with its Arteon, which is a stretched, redressed Passat shot upmarket to chase 3 Series, A4 and C-Class buyers. If looks alone were the deciding factor against the Big Three in the segment, the Arteon might already have it won. But it’s not.

Same but different
You can probably expect to see a bit more of this from Volkswagen. One model does pretty well, so its engineers and product planners try to figure out how to make another one just like it, but seemingly quite different.

It’s not a new formula, but it was popularised in the modern era by Mercedes-Benz with its stodgy E-Class and its opposite-of-stodgy CLS.

So here is Volkswagen with the stodgy Passat and the opposite-of-stodgy Arteon, which effectively replaces the Passat CC, even if Volkswagen insists it doesn’t, because they’ve repositioned it quite a bit higher.

To be fair to Volkswagen, it’s not quite the same as the Passat, even if there are too many interior design points that prove the link.

Its interior layout and its feeling of space are helped by adding a full 50mm to the Passat's already generous wheelbase, but that's the end of the core hardware differences.

The 2017 Volkswagen Arteon 2.0-litre TSI R-Line has more maturity than Passat

The Arteon’s engine choices include two versions of the 2.0-litre TSI petrol-powered four-cylinder and a lone 2.0-litre turbo diesel, plus the 1.5-litre four that’s deemed too expensive for Australian Golfs and there’s even talk of a hi-po V6.

Volkswagen Australia, though, has wiped its hands of most of the available powertrains and will only take the 206kW petrol four when it arrives locally, expected to be around October 2017.

Fitted as standard with on-demand all-wheel drive, Australia’s Arteon will do the leg work via 350kW of torque from 1700rpm to 5600rpm, while its power peaks from 5100 to 6500rpm, which promises a broad spread of performance.

In spite of Volkswagen sending us only the R-Line specification and trim, it’s not expecting the Arteon to be a sports sedan. It will shoot to 100km/h in 5.6 seconds, though, which is sharp enough for the daily drudge of most people, and it tops out at a limited 250km/h.

Roomy interior
The old Passat CC had some issues with rear-seat headroom and vision out of the rear glass, both of which have been sorted out with the new car. It also works pretty well at moving upstream, and its dimensions are generous enough to put it into the mix.

Many of the Volkswagen Arteon's interior parts are borrowed from the Passat

Its overall dimensions are larger than both the Audi A5 Sportback and BMW’s 4-Series Gran Coupe and the 2481mm wheelbase (up 131mm on the Passat CC) makes its rear seats roomier than both of them, too, offering a claimed 1016mm, or more than a metre. At 4862mm, its overall length is 95mm longer than the base Passat sedan and 65mm longer than the Passat CC.

The Arteon’s liftback-style luggage area delivers 563 litres of standard luggage capacity (87 litres shy of the Passat’s enormous cavern) or 1557 litres with the rear seats folded flat, while the rear seats also carry a 60:40 split and a sizeable through-portal.

Sporty pretensions
The German-built Arteon, then, is big, inside and out. It is also refined to a surprising level. There are laminated side windows that rise from frameless doors, more sound and vibration deadening than the Passat and its LED headlights aren’t just standard, but are integral to its stretched-grille face.

The five-seat R-Line version uses its own custom-designed adaptive damping system, which moves it upstream from the already-comfortable Passat.

The Volkswagen Arteon's 2.0-litre turbo-petrol engine is good for 206kW

The multi-level system lets the Arteon waft along when you want it to, or allows you to lean on the full potential of the tyres if you prefer it that way, too. While the car will also have 17-, 18- and 19-inch wheels and tyres in the brochures, Volkswagen fitted every launch car with 20-inch wheels, just because it thought the cars looked better that way.

Like most multi-level active systems, the Arteon’s is best left to its own devices in the Normal mode, which most people in the know refer to as the Engineer’s mode: the one they knew the car should have been fitted with all along, even though product marketing people wanted a range of setups.

In this setting, body control is terrific and the gearshifts are slurred softly through the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. It still isn’t at its best over potholes, however, with a shudder working deep into the cabin.

By contrast, sport mode is too firm for all but the most frantic of driving. Potholes and square-edges are a particular bugbear in Sport, but as a plus it brings with it the best and most intuitive weighting and directness to the steering feel. (Volkswagen wanted us to know they’d pinched the steering guru from Porsche for the Arteon, but its electric power steering will never be confused for a Cayman's).

The Volkswagen Arteon's design is bold - and that yellow is searing!

This is when you’ll push the engine, too, which is a bit special. While you know the engine is a hard-working four pot, its vibrations are neatly isolated from the cabin and it’s strong, especially above 3000rpm. While there’s enough power to push the 1716kg Arteon along nicely at high revs, there are times you have to go chasing more revs. Fortunately, the downshifts are fast and sharp, which you’ll be demanding if you’re towing 2200kg.

Then there’s a Comfort mode, which is too wafty for Australian tastes and may suit Americans better, and an Eco mode as well as an Individual mode, which lets you mix-and-match your pick of different modes.

Top-flight safety
In a strong hint that Volkswagen may be further along the autonomous path than a lot of analysts and commentators give it credit for, the Arteon seamlessly blends luxury car segment sophistication with its latest generations of adaptive cruise control, GTS and road data and Emergency Assist.

Effectively, you can now drive an Arteon on the steering alone, letting the car’s cruise control do everything else. The test drive dealt with German-spec speed limits (it works at up to 210km/h) and warning signs, which are yellow squares for towns, but Volkswagen insists it’ll be right for Australia’s red circles, too.

The Arteon can largely drive itself in slow-moving traffic

Unlike earlier systems, the Arteon recognised and dealt with the drop down from 100km/h to 50km/h and even 30km/h smoothly and calmly, rather than rushing in and braking urgently at the last moment. Suddenly, it’s like the car could erase an entire layer of stress out of driving in a country like Australia.

You just tap the "resume" button on the steering wheel and the system takes care of accelerating and braking, even combining everything it knows from its GPS mapping to slow down for corners or roundabouts and accelerate out of them again.

It performs the same tasks more aggressively in Sport mode, snapping off downshifts along the way, and even more gently in Comfort. You’ll only ever have to be involved if you’re stopped at a traffic light for more than a few seconds.

The system is more sophisticated than it sounds, with the Arteon translating and combining data streams from the radar, forward-facing camera in the windscreen and its own HERE-derived mapping data. It also uses the camera to determine precisely where it is in its lane (left, right or centre) and how hard it needs to brake for each corner.

Fully autonomous cars are still decades away, but cars like this offer a taste

The steering, too, has the capability to do the same thing, though Volkswagen demands you give the wheel a re-grab every 15 seconds or so. It can also be fully autonomous in traffic jams, right up until 60km/h, controlling the steering, braking and acceleration independent of any driver input.

There are lane-keeping and lane-departure systems, but the latest breakthrough is the car's ability to realise when its driver is incapacitated (asleep, heart attack or, in our case, intentionally disinterested for scientific research) and take "countermeasures", not unlike like the Benz E-Class.

We tested the system (just once, and not to Volkswagen’s knowledge) by not touching the brake, accelerator or steering wheel for 30 seconds. The car responded with an audio alert, flashing sign in the digital instrument cluster and a sharp, short jolt on the brakes. We still did nothing.

Then it switched on the hazard lights and moved to the side of the road and stopped. Volkswagen insists it can do this at highway speeds, swinging the lane-departure systems into play to move safely to the slow lane and then the side of the road.

Will the Volkswagen Arteon resonate with Aussie buyers?

The shortfall
If there’s an area where Volkswagen could have worked a bit harder, it’s the interior design. The dash layout is very much Passat in the way it looks and feels and its interior designer admitted there wasn’t a lot more they could have done to differentiate it.

The upside for Volkswagen in that is that the Passat’s interior is much more impressive to look at than its body shell, and the materials are high quality in the way they look and feel.

It’s probably best for prospective buyers to order the Arteon with the optional head-up display, because the cut-out for it on top of the instrument cluster will drive you mad with its reflections anyway.

The top-spec 9.2-inch touchscreen multi-media display is sort-of gesture control, with its displays getting bigger and easier to use as your fingers approach. For all that, there’s no easy-to-operate scroller, like Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz use, largely because Volkswagen believes the touchscreen does everything those systems do anyway.

The climate-control air conditioner’s front vent runs across the full width of the dashboard, interrupted only by an analogue clock in the centre, while the seats are supportive and comfortable, both in the front and the rear.

Volkswagen Arteon 2.0-litre TSI R-Line 2017 pricing and specifications:
Price: TBA
Engine: 2.0-litre, four-cylinder, turbo-petrol
Output: 206kW/350Nm
Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch, all-wheel drive
Fuel: 7.3 litres/100km
CO2: 164 grams/km
Safety Rating: TBA

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Written byMichael Taylor
See all articles
Our team of independent expert car reviewers and journalistsMeet the team
Expert rating
79/100
Engine, Drivetrain & Chassis
16/20
Price, Packaging & Practicality
14/20
Safety & Technology
18/20
Behind The Wheel
15/20
X-Factor
16/20
Pros
  • Quiet and strong
  • Good-looking gadget
  • Fool-resistant safety tech
Cons
  • No diesel variant
  • Dash reflections in sunlight
  • Interior too similar to Passat
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