That swarm of brand-new Volkswagen Passats that blew past you on Interstate 24 last week is coming soon to a newsstand near you.
Automotive journalists from across North America were in Chattanooga last week for the media launch of the Chattanooga-made sedan. About 150 media representatives from the United States, Canada and Mexico traveled in waves from Chattanooga to Nashville to put the Passat through its paces.
While the new cars won’t start arriving at Volkswagen dealerships until September, consumers will be introduced to the car this summer through reports in car magazines and on automotive websites.
Some interesting facts:
• The diesel-powered TDI version of the Passat gets 43 miles per gallon of fuel in highway driving and has a cruising range of almost 800 miles. You could fill up in Chattanooga and drive to Miami on a single tank.
• The assembly line at the VW plant at Enterprise South is now turning out about 60 Passats a day. That number is expected to rise to 233 daily by the end of June.
• As a quality-control measure, the Passat assembly line shuts down if robots detect body-panel assembly is off by more than 1.2 millimeters, about the thickness of a dime.
• The larger, American-made Passat will not be sold in Europe, where company officials believe it would be considered too big for popular tastes.
Kennedy is the content editor of the Times Free Press Life sections and writes the “Life Stories” column. Previously, he was the first Sunday editor of the Times Free Press. Before Chattanooga’s newspapers were merged in 1999, Kennedy was the coordinating editor of the Chattanooga Times, where he had previously been an education reporter, feature writer and team leader. His first newspaper job was as sports editor of the Cleveland (Tenn.) Daily Banner. Kennedy’s human ...
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Passat has been actually gaining reputation in today's generation especially in European countries. Basically, this is a mid-size sedan that grabs the attention of many when it was featured in one of the popular auto shows and good thing for Volkswagen since it is generation extra revenue for them. I remembered the commercials about the little dartvader. Lol. However on the other hand, Volkswagen not just promised quality but the ease of maintenance for this model as well. These days, there are a lot of replacement auto parts that could guarantee safety and durability and these include Fuel sending unit, engine parts, suspension parts and even rare accessories.
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