Just driven the 5.0ltr VW Phaeton V10.
 

2.5tonnes
0-60 6.9secs
309 bhp 5.0ltr diesal engine
553lb ft Torque!!!!

What a weird experience.
This car has no sensation of speed whatsoever.....until you get to a corner!!
The steering rack slows down the quicker you go, so much so that there is actually a noticeable delay which makes for an arse puckering experience when going very quickly into a corner and then turning the wheel...for a split second nothing happens!!

And the laser guided/assisted cruise control is the weirdest thing. you can set it to 3 car lengths, set the cruise speed to 90mph and thunder up behind slow moving traffic on the motorway and then sit back and wait for this 2tonne behemoth to slam the anchors on for you as soon as you are 3 cars away.

its a bit of a leap of faith, hoping that the car is actually going to slow down.

overall a very nice car, does exactly what its supposed to - waft you around in comfort and belt down autobahns. it has every conceivable gadget on there for you.

but 60k for a VW........

Sounds horrendous, like worn steering track rod ends, bushes or similar, so now they are engineering in authentic simulated faults !

But BMW already have a "fag paper" setting ..... :D:D

MD's new toy??

As fitted as standard to X5's I believe ;)

No just on test from VW in the vain hope that we're stupid enough to spend 60k on a jumped up Passat. :)

LOL - you test pilot! ;) Their are pictures of me faxed around all local car dealers, especially Porsche lol, but it's a bit of fun when you've got a spare afternoon! :D

RE: cash, they want a lot of money for their 4-be-4 as well, the old man had a look at one recently, but it was well over priced. He got a Passat 1.8T Sport estate at the mo, but it's ****e, and bits keep falling off it on the motorway! I talked him into an Audi A6 estate TDI auto/tiptronic - he gets it next month!

LOL! I'm no test pilot!! My company has a fleet of nearly 100 cars so manufacturers tend to throw them at us. Unfortunately it tends to be of the w@nky repmobile variety as opposed to the kind of stuff that we actually want to drive!

We do have a couple of Passats on the fleet and i was pleasantly surprised how much poke they had for a diesel. They're just a bit clinical and unenvolving and i find the interior functional but very bland.
We've also go the diesel Golf GTI which again was very surprising - if it wasnt for the diabolical handling and excessive weight it could've been an astonishing car!!!

Well if you got a busy schedule on, I could test some cars for you ;)

My ol fella's Passat was the Petrol 1.8T Sport auto. It's got about 65k on the clock, the front bumper black bits keep falling off :) and the other day it broke down on the motorway, apparently there was a fault awaiting a recall, something to do with coils, I fell asleep while he was explaining it to me! :D Been sorted now he been very happy with it on the whole, and VW service apparently very good. I not driven it properly had a few flicks around felt very solid and chunky, great ride as a passanger.

Think he'll be better off with the Audi though.

I heard the Golf TDI was very tastey, in someways the first of this new breed of oil burning hot hatches! :) Chipping them gives them a lot more torque, but that's not really an option for company cars! :)

The Phaeton appears to be larger than the Smart Roadster - I noticed that when I was on a road recently and they were side by side...

Abdabz ..... is that that the screaming kind...... ? :D