1999 Volkswagen Passat review from North America

Not much has gone wrong with the car, until last week that is. More about that in a minute. Typical stuff, a couple of burned out lights (really easy to change). The mirror control knob came off (warranty fix). Whoever designed the rear cup holder didn't have three kids. (warranty fix)

I bought for a lot of reasons. The quality looked good. The trunk with folding rear seat is huge. I like the conservative style. They've added a bunch of chrome since then, which is too bad.

With the V6 and the tiptronic, there is plenty of punch for the around town driving I do. I would have been happy with the 1.8T and the 5 speed, but it wasn't in the cards.

It's by far the best handling car I've owned, even with the skinny factory tires. You can forget the slow curve ahead signs, they just don't apply.

One caution though, it absolutely hates worn tires. The handling goes away completely. The first time it happened, I thought the alignment was way off. Actually with the 65K miles, it's never been aligned. Try that with a Ford.

Which brings me to last week when my wife tried guardrail surfing in a snow storm. She's fine, but it wasn't so good for the car. Hey, I guess I should have bought the 5 speed, then she wouldn't have been driving it.

It'll be at least 6 weeks until I get it back. It's a steady diet of the '97 GMC van until then. I miss it already.