Lounge wizard
It’s roomy. It makes passengers happy. It doesn’t drive very well. Time to decide where your true priorities rest. By Ben Pulman
THERE’S NOTHING WORSE than a bad boring car. The Arteon, however, is a brilliant boring car.
If circumstances deny you delectable steering feel and a naturally aspirated engine that revs to 9000rpm, lumbering you instead with a need for comfort and convenience, it sucks to know you’re being short-changed. It’s all too easy for manufacturers to turn out dross with an indecipherable infotainment system and a design so depressing that opening the garage has you feeling like you’ve just collected the keys to a bottom-of-therung rental car.
That’s not the Arteon. It’s shone in its months with us – literally so when the sun reflects off the paint. That colour is part of the feelgood factor, showing off the chiselled lines to full effect and causing members of the public to flock to it. Forget your Astons and your Ferraris, I’ve never had so many comments from so many people, at petrol stations, in car parks, even coming out of the house one day to find two random passers-by admiring it in the street. No one guessed it was a posh Passat.
Those gorgeous lines hide the hatchback. Nearly every executive saloon sticks to a conventional boot, but bucking the trend is a boon for the Arteon. We specced our car with the optional electrical tailgate (£900, which included keyless entry too), and one flick of your foot under the rear bumper has the huge fifth door rising to reveal the enormous (563 litres) luggage area. We didn’t once struggle for space, and it came into its own on our annual Sports Car Giant Test (SCGT), swallowing the crew’s kit for the week and proving the perfect tracking vehicle for photographer Richard Pardon.
That event was an acid test for the Arteon’s overall abilities. It’d been given short shrift at the Our Cars Away Day earlier in the year – when everyone just wanted to thrash Mark Walton’s shiny new M5 around North Wales – but a long schlep to France and back revealed where it excels. The long wheelbase (2837mm) meant anyone could fit in behind my 6ft 5in frame with room to spare. So when the choice was hours in the Alpine’s passenger seat, or squeezed into the back of the M2 Competition, or the tough ride of the Porsche GT2 RS, the Arteon kept finding itself four-up and leading our convoy. And away from SCGT, I only adored it more. A smidge under 200bhp is enough for London life (and the overall mpg reflected its stop/start life) and long motorway cruises gave 40mpg and 500 miles between fills. The seats are great, the infotainment system exemplary, and the high-quality interior has just enough buttons – there’s no need to dive into the central touchscreen for even the simplest of commands. Case in point: the button on the dash that lets you activate the (optional £765) 360° cameras in an instant, which is particularly useful given the frequency of width restrictors and dicey onstreet parking manoeuvres in London.
That option is a must-have, but I wouldn’t spec the panoramic sunroof (£935) again because it’s tiny, and it never got cold enough to use the heated front climate windscreen (£305). I also defaulted to leaving the £820 adaptive dampers in their softest setting, only dialling up Sport mode when it was on camera car duties at the Circuit de Charade (which was also one of the few times the £195 electronic differential lock was given a workout). But the reversible fabric/rubber mat for the boot was worth every bit of the £140 we paid for it, and the same goes for the £595 yellow paint.
In short, you might not be in the market for a ‘normal’ car, but if you are, I can’t recommend the Arteon highly enough.