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I got back from Atlanta last night, where I went with the first group for Passat Launch training. The training consisted of two parts – getting to know the new 2012 Passat, and a tour of the brand new VW factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Since these two topics are somewhat separated – I will start from the factory.

Volkswagen Factory in Channanooga

We were given an extensive tour of the factory yesterday morning. It was a pretty long walk, basically walked the full length of the assembly line – about 3 miles. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take cameras or phones with us, so I only have a couple photos taken outside, and two stock photos I found on line, that may or may not have been taken there.

The whole area in Georgia and Tennessee is beautiful – very green, tall trees. The factory has its own exit off the highway with highway overpass towards the factory and a dead end in the opposite direction.

Once you get off the freeway – you drive for about two miles through the forest and hills towards the factory, divided highway, 2 lanes in each direction.

This is me before going in for the tour. We had to wear long sleeve, helmets, clear glasses and headphones to listen to our guide.

The factory has been building cars for about a month, most of the were pre-production cars for training and press, and it is not yet at full capacity. They are still finishing up some things – you see people still working on construction, landscape, some areas of the assembly line. I tried to take as many notes as possible during the tour, and I will put them in in points:

• For those that prefer cars that are built in Germany – after seeing and hearing how it is arranged – I would feel confident buying a car built anywhere else. All VW factories around the world (by the way – this is 62nd VW factory) is run by VW in Wolfsburg, not VW of America. Passat was designed in Germany, and they control all aspects of the production. As I will mention later – they have quality control people that answer directly to Wolfsburg.
• Around 1,900 employees are working at the factory, which were chosen out of about 80,000 applicants – 42 per hire. I think there is an opportunity missed for a reality show… Among other facilities the factory has (gym, clynic, etc), they have German classes for employees, so they can communicate better with engineers and management from VW. There is also a uniform store, they have pretty cool uniforms such as jeans with VW logo, but unfortunately we were not allowed to shop there…
• Right now the factory runs one shift, but it has the capacity for 3 shifts around the clock, 150,000 cars per year, 31 cars per hour.
• This is an assembly plant, which means that it gets engines from other plants 2.5 from Mexico, TDI from Poland and 3.6 from Germany), pre-stamped sheet metal is delivered from US suppliers, and they put the frame and the body here.
• The assembly of the frame and the body is impressive. The whole process is done by robots – I think they said about 50 robots, which cost $30,000 each base, before they get customized. The image of them working, with sparks flying reminds the scene from Terminator 4, where Skynet builds terminators. I was happy to remember that April 19th, 2011 has passed, and these guys are not going to stop building Passats, and start a war against humanity… So these guys put the hole body together including doors, but the doors are taken off for easy access installing other components after the paint job, and they are assigned to a specific car.
• We could not see the actual process of laser wielding, because it is too bright and dangerous to vision, and this process is done in an enclosed box. It takes about 7 minutes to put the front end, B-pillars, side and roof together, which is 40% more than spot wielding, but this is what separates boys from men. Laser wielding is used in making of all Audi’s Bentleys and VW’s, while there is no American or Japanese manufacturer is going that, BMW is not doing that, and Mercedes is using laser wielding on expensive cars only, C-class, GLK, E-Class – are all spot-wielded. You can tell the difference right away by looking at a roof of any car: if it has a black plastic stip running on the side of the roof – it is hiding spot wielding. This is fine for building planes, where you want to have flexibility, but not for cars, where structural rigidity is important to improve handling and to eliminate road noise.
• Another process we could not see was the paint shop – it is almost a sterile environment, 100% dust free. They use a new paint technology – water based paint and no primer, which reduces cost, waist and corrosion. Hot wax is injected into the paint to prevent corrosion as well, which allows VW to offer 12 year corrosion warranty.
• The rest of assembly is done by highly trained people, which quality assurance overseeing every step. While walking by the assembly line, we heard loud music – apparently the line was stopped when an issue was located, and the music was playing until it was resolved, so everyone knew what was going on. Every station has a person responsible, with his or hers information and photo posted.
• The one phrase you hear and see everywhere in the factory is “Passion for details”. The biggest part of the process which was seen throughout the whole line was QA. Gap tolerance is half a millimeter (normal for car industry is one millimeter). All cars go through “Zebra lighting” paint inspection, where the car is inspected in three different lights, every function and button is checked whether it works properly, and every car goes through a dynamometer, which takes the car to 90 MPH, and checks the the transmission goes through all 6 gears at the right points. Every shift two car bodies are randomly takes aside, checked by computer and a sonogram against standard, and taken completely apart to check the wields, bolts and everything. An engineer employed by Wolfsburg takes one car every shift for full check – he takes in on a speed course, highway, city drive, and checks how everything else works. His report goes directly to Germany.
• Another major accent goes to efficiency and sustainability. All parts are delivered “just in time”, so there is no need for bid storage. Parts and components are brought inside through miltiple access points directly to the target work station, so there is less commotion inside the factory. The factory is built on a landfill, rain water is recycled, new paint process saves 50,000 gallons of water every day, and unused paint is recycle as well – the list of things they do to minimize the impact on the environment is huge.

The new 2012 Passat

Now to the car: I got to drive and ride in the car for the 80 mile and back ride from Atlanta to Chattanooga. We had the pre-production equivalent of 2.5 SEL.

Looks: the car looks very proportional and small – smaller than the Passat B6, I think this is mainly because it doesn’t have a huge trunk lid. Some of my classmates called it “Baby Phaeton”. Chrome trim line runs acound the car – on doors and rear bumber:

Lights and fog lights are integrated well into the front grille design:

Interior look like VW should look – clean, simple, high quality:

Ride: nice firm steering feel, very confident on turns, low road noise, neither floaty nor bumpy, even in the back seat. Back seat is very roomy and comfortable with plenty of head room. The trunk is big, even though it is actually smaller than the new Jetta’s trunk: 15.1 vs. 15.5 cubic feet. Still enough room:

Leather seats with swede inserts look very high-end:

Rear windows don’t roll all the way down, as it should be in a family car, and as you can see in this photo – for some reason you can see a painted frame from inside:

One huge problem that hopefully VW will fix soon – no AC outlets in the back. You do get air from under front seats, but competition, as well as Jetta MKV have it.

The key is the same as a standard VW key, except for the remote start button:

It looks like you can have both iPod adapter AND AUX input:

In the glove box you have the TPMS reset and the Valet button:

Armrest can be extended, but not raised:

Dash board is nice and soft, but there is a weird design element – a step by the windshield with same trim as the car – wood trim in our case:

Here is a video walk-around:

Performance – we all know what to expect from this engine. Obviously it is not the fastest, but it does the job well, better than Camry’s 4 cylinder, and it has a nice low-end torque, which makes up for the lack of horsepower. Of course, there is also the TDI and 3.6, both will offer better performance to those that require it. It was enough to get to 80 MPH on a highway, merge into traffic safely without even having to kick it to Sport mode.

We got to compare the new Passat against the competition on a slalom course: we had all brand new Camry, Accord and Sonata. Camry is very old now, it was the slowest of the bunch with scary kicking from brakes. Very floaty feel, which might be a good thing considering that it has the oldest owners.  Accord, even though it has 190 HP – didn’t feel fast, mainly because with the V-Tec you have to spool it pretty fast to get to good power. Handling wise – we were just scared to push it, it felt like it is going to lose control any second. The Sonata is the newest and the hottest right now, and it is pretty impressive – aggressive design, nice list of features and 198 horsepower. It felt fairly fast, but there was a significant understeer – after one lap my elbow started to hurt. It was not much firmer than Accord. One thing about lists of features: all these cars come with bunch of features, and that is what customers want, and how people compare them. What people fail to see is the difference in the quality of components. Look at navigation in any Japanese car, and compare it to RNS-510 (I will try to put a video later). Compare their Bluetooth system to VW’s, which gives you better sound quality, access to phone book and call history and voice activation. Compare USB or AUX jack with full iPod integration. Better quality equals more value.

I was able to steal a couple of minutes and record a quick walk-around of Camry and Sonata:

Here is a short video of me driving the car on the way back to Atlanta Airport: