THE VOLKSWAGEN Passat W8 is no ordinary car. Look at its engine, and the way the German marque has been able to stuff a compact six-cylinder unit into the engine bay built for an inline, four-power unit.
Volkswagen made the Passat W8 special by joining two banks of 15-degree 'V' four-cylinder units at the crankshaft (below right) to form an eight-cylinder engine in a 'double-V', or 'W' configuration - alluded to in the model's name badges - outperforming the Passat range's previous top-of-the-line model, the 2.8 V6.
It is hard to imagine a car about the size of a Honda Accord being able to fit in an eight-cylinder engine. I am accustomed to seeing long and big V8 engines fit into the engine bays of much bigger cars such as Lexus LS430, Mercedes-Benz E500 and BMW 540i, but the use of space in the mid-sized Passat is quite astonishing.
The W8, which sits longitudinally in the engine bay, is so small I swear I can wrap my arms around it.
From the outside, the engine looks about the same size as a conventional V6; but it's so compact it rests in front of the front axle. The four-litre W8 engine is no slouch, cranking out 275 brake horsepower at 6,000rpm. And it sprints to 100km/h in 7.5 seconds, two seconds faster than the 2.8 V6's 193bhp unit.
I entered the W8 test car, still glowing with the memory of an even faster six-speed manual model I had recently driven in Switzerland. That model showed tremendous highway passing ability, especially at more than 140km/h, yet it lacked the acceleration most motorists might expect from an eight-cylinder engine.