Thanks, Volkswagen thank you very bloody much. You could have informed us prior to receiving our bloody irritating Arteon long-termer of your intention to comprehensively update the bloody irritating Arteon. And here it is complete with an all-new estate derivative to further irritate the hell out of us. Now, VW is referring to the estate form-factor as a “shooting Brake”. It isn’t a shooting brake. It is… a bloody irritating Arteon estate. The bloody irritating Arteon has been in production since 2017. In the car industry the passage of time requires constant vigilance, or as the marketing people say, product update verticals.
The bloody irritating Arteon has received a number of updates that essentially de-Passat’s the interior. And we can see the top portion of the dashboard receives a new design language. And it looks good. Or as VW is saying “avant-garde design”. We can also see the introduction of the new VW flat-bottom steering wheel design. The heating controls are now Star-Trek-ed in so far as the days of sticky-out heating control dials are gone. And it looks cleaner as a result.
The exterior receives minor styling updates. The front end features a new continuous light strip, chrome bars and new air intakes at the bottom. The rear tail-lights get a new cluster design. The body trim receives minor styling updates. VW couldn’t do too much to the exterior because it already looked too damn good.
The Arteon R is introduced as the new flagship standard-bearer, the 300bhp performance version features all manner of electronic technology to make it corner fast and go fast in a straight line. The problem is that the bloody irritating Arteon is built like a tank and from our personal experience our R Line long-termer is as about as athletic as a sinking ship.
No matter what spec you go for the bloody irritating Arteon is and always will be a cruiser. And if a populist motoring magazine declares the bloody irritating Arteon R is a thumbs up 5-star sports car then do not believe it. That populist motoring journalist is interested in keeping VW happy for the sole purpose of retaining access to free VW booze invites and parties and the precious VW press fleet. That’s how the system works folks.
And now the bloody irritating Arteon estate. The saloon is accommodating enough. Admittedly from our experience headroom is tight for anyone over six-foot. But the estate remedies that slight issue somewhat. The estate delivers a capacity of up to 565 litres with the seats up, just 2-litres more than the saloon/fastback. With the seats lowered the capacity increases to 1,632 litres (saloon/fastback: 1,557 litres).
And that’s all you need to know about the bloody irritating Arteon estate. It’s fairly simple to work out that it delivers more liter-capacity. That’s what estates do. The bloody irritating Arteon is nothing more than a styling update. Most of the technology is carried over from the pre-face lifted version although the VW press release is desperately trying to say otherwise.
The biggest takeaway here is the estate variant. Looks nice. However, VW will be introducing a plug-in hybrid, which makes use of the Passat GTE plug-in hybrid powertain. That system features a 1.4-litre TSi mated to 13kWh battery and tiny electric motors. Launch date? unknown at this time. The overall problem is, very few people buy the bloody irritating Arteon. So that begs the question, why bother VW? Why?
