The Arteon Shooting Brake comes equipped with VW’s DCC adaptive dampers as standard, and these give the chassis a good breadth of ability.
In truth, though, there’s little reason ever to let the suspension stray from its default Comfort setting. Reaping the benefits of the increased damping force in Sport mode would require you to drive the Arteon eHybrid in a fashion that exceeds its dynamic sweet spot, because this is a car that prioritises secure roadholding and accurate, measured direction changes over the sort of agility and handling flair you’d expect from BMW or Mercedes and, to some extent, Peugeot.
The VW can sustain good cross-country pace and is reasonably agile for its size, but this chassis lacks throttle adjustability and doesn’t have that ability to shrink itself around you on smaller roads. It never asks to be driven at all hard and doesn’t reward any efforts to do so.
That said, the Arteon Shooting Brake offers up more to the keen driver than the Passat and has more to chew on dynamically than the Skoda Octavia or Superb can muster.
You can enjoy the process of flowing the VW down an A- or B-road, secure in the knowledge that the suspension (MacPherson struts up front, multilink at the rear) will soak up the road surface without much fuss and yet isn’t vulnerable to excessive float.
Grip levels provided by the Pirelli P Zero tyres are unlikely to be surpassed by even committed driving. The uniformity of weight in the steering is disappointing but to be expected, and the tuning – this is an electrically assisted set-up with speed-dependent gearing – is at least accurate and consistent.
