Arteon’s art of upmarket styling and roomy driving
GENEVA MOTOR SHOW/ The Volkswagen CC replacement gets sexier, more expensive and bigger, writes Michael Taylor
The second generation of Volkswagen’s high prince of style has arrived in the form of the Arteon. Too cool for the Passat CC name, the five-seat Arteon has smoothed out the more boring bits of the Passat and added an extra layer of practicality onto the old CC.
It has also moved a little more upmarket, too, with VW pitching it at a more sophisticated customer than the Passat, even though they are essentially the same car beneath the Arteon’s more aggressive styling.
ENGINE RANGE
Still sitting on an elongated version of the MQB modular frontdrive architecture, the Arteon is planned to stick with a pure four-cylinder range of engines, including even the new 1.5l, turbocharged petrol engine which debuted in the Golf Mk7.5 last month.
At 4,862mm long, the Arteon will be 95mm longer than the standard Passat sedan but only 64mm longer than the superceded Passat CC.
It should also pay dividends in interior passenger space, especially in the rear-seat legroom area, with a 50mm stretch in the mainstream sedan’s wheelbase to 2,841mm.
It will have an even bigger improvement in rear-seat space over the Passat CC, with the wheelbase jumping 131mm from 2,710mm. It’s also significantly wider, at 1,832mm (an additional 39mm), although its roofline is 29mm lower, at 1,427mm.
The new car, built in Germany and under consideration for SA, has addressed plenty of the concerns of Passat CC owners, including the larger rear-window glass area for improved visibility.
While it has less luggage capacity than the Passat, its boot is still a fairly capacious 563l (the Passat has 650l) and it can boost that to 1,557l with the seats folded down. That’s a jump of 31l of standard boot space over the CC and an enormous 577l improvement with the seats down.
The car’s base engine, the 1.5l TSI, will deliver 110kW of power, after which the Arteon family moves through two variants of the same 2.0l TSI petrol family.
The first of these (and the middle of the petrol range) delivers 140kW of power and the flagship has 206kW of power.
There is a six-speed manual option for the base engine, although it can be ordered with a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, which is standard on the 2.0l TSI motors, while the flagship scores all-wheel drive. The diesel family is essentially three variants of the same 2.0l TDI motor, starting at 110kW (six-speed manual or sevenspeed DSG), 140kW (ditto) or the DSG-only 176kW range-topper, which is also all-wheel drive.
VW hasn’t released consumption data on the Arteon’s volume models yet, although the flagship petrol motor claims a combined figure of 7.3l/100km (and CO2 emissions of 164g/km) and the diesel at 5.9l/100km and 152g.
If Volkswagen SA brings the Arteon to our shores, it is unlikely we will get all derivatives, as it is expected to command more of a premium in price over the outgoing CC.