Take one Passat, topologically distort its lines into something resembling a designer’s fanciful rendering, and there you have it: the CC. Most of the saloon’s design elements remain, but they have morphed into something leaner and meaner. So a chunkier front grille with fewer, thicker slats sits ahead of a bonnet sculpted with ridges and a power bulge.
The waistline and the ridge below it now sweep upwards to create a more pronounced, wedge-shaped profile, while the roofline is lower and more curvaceous, and frameless door windows (including the rear quarterlights) add to the coupé ambience.
Not a single outer panel is shared with the saloon. The tail-lights have melted from paired roundels to oblique ellipses. These rear lights apart, the view of the short-booted tail could almost be that of a Jaguar.
Beneath this new skin lie the usual Passat mechanicals, which include (or will include) the choice of the 1.8-litre engine tested here, a 197bhp 2.0-litre TSI petrol, two 2.0 TDI diesels of 138bhp and 168bhp, and a 3.6-litre petrol V6 with 296bhp and four-wheel drive. The V6 has a DSG gearbox as standard; it’s optional in the others, with seven gears in the 1.8’s case.
Other changes from the regular Passat are a ride height lowered by 15mm thanks to the ‘sport’ suspension, plus the option (not fitted to our test car) of electronic adaptive dampers as part of a GT pack.
The basic chassis ingredients are unchanged, however. That means MacPherson struts at the front, a four-link system at the back (uncannily like Ford’s arrangement for the original Focus) and electric power steering by rack-mounted motor. Wheels are at least 17 inches in diameter and 7.5 inches wide; no version is allowed to look like a poverty-spec model.
