The W8 Was Overcomplicated, Underpowered and Too Costly for the Touareg and Phaeton
W8 - how we hardly knew thee. The news is now official, production of the very unique W8 engine and the Passat W8, the only vehicle which made use of it, has ended. Born in a time when Ferdinand Piëch was overlord at Volkswagen and nothing was too good for the upwardly mobile VW brand, the unorthodox W8 engine configuration promised compact packaging and big power.
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| It's official, production of the very unique W8 engine and the Passat W8 has ended. (Photo: Volkswagen Canada) |
It delivered the first, and a reasonable level of the second, but due to a serious lack of foresight the automaker had only a single model to display it, and while a nicely made but nevertheless middle-of-the-road midsize model the Passat could hardly justify its rarified price once the new engine was fitted. The shame, after much expense and now embarrassing hoopla, is that the very capable Passat W8 failed to stir the souls of the masses.
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| The very capable, but lofty priced, Passat W8 failed to stir the souls of the masses. (Photo: Volkswagen Canada) |
While today's Volkswagens are more or less conventional automobiles, their engines are derived from a rather colorful background. Aside from being one of the only automakers to consistently offer diesel models in its lineup, VW shocked the world back in the early '90s with the announcement that it would produce a large-displacement six-cylinder motor for use in a vehicle that had previously only enough room in the engine bay to accept a small inline-four. The world said it couldn't be done, but Volkswagen's engineers said otherwise.