Overview & Reviews

The 2012 Volkswagen Passat has been fully redesigned. Highlights include a lower price, a roomier interior and a newly available turbodiesel engine.

• Roomy cabin
• Refined ride.
• Many upscale features come standard
• High-quality cabin
• Available fuel-efficient turbodiesel engine

• Rearview camera not offered.
• Lackadaisical throttle response
• Below-average braking distances

User Reviews:

Showing 1 through 10 of 83.00

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  Avoid this car if your goal is to buy a reliable v - 2012 Volkswagen Passat
  By Scott Young - August 26 - 10:10 am

  I bought the 2012 diesel Passat for the fuel economy and range. During the summer months I get almost 50 mpg hwy and winter is less because of the diesel fuel additives. HOWEVER- I have 135,000 miles on a 2012 and so far have dumped more than $9000 in maintenance and repairs. Every 40K miles the DSG transmission service is $800 and that is the cheap part. At slightly over 100k miles the problems started and they were all emissions related (this car is complicated). First the Add Blue tank heater failed and the entire tank must be replaced ($1000) then the butterfly valve for burning off the particulate failed ($1000), Both cooling fans ($800) and two oxygen sensors ($1000), add to that VW changed from a timing chain to a timing belt in 2011 so at 130K timing belt, water pump rollers/bearings etc. ached service was $2200. My VW dealer was great but VW needs to address reliability on this model (wonder whats going to happen with the emissions scandal ??)

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  Worst car and customer service in the world - 2012 Volkswagen Passat
  By totsntators - July 5 - 3:14 pm

  EPIC FAIL: 44K miles in and my engine completely dies on a busy interstate while im 5 months pregnant. apparently a bolt holding the injector pumps in place broke, dislodged the pumps and killed the engine. breakage was traced back to fuel system replacement done 3 months ago. i filed a formal complaint with dealership and GM of dealership reacted by aggressively demanding his rental car back and threatening to call the cops on me if i dont return it immediately (we were loaned the car until our repairs were done). customer care heard about all the incidents but took no action or accountability for what happened. worst car ever owned and will never buy VW ever again. buyers beware!

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  Diesel engine. VW dealerships are scammers - 2012 Volkswagen Passat
  By Richard Fleming - August 7 - 11:10 pm

  Not sure why I couldnt select anything but gas models from the drop-down list here but I have the 2012 TDI SE with automatic. The car was in the dealership so many times for repairs and recalls that the salesman joked about how he saw us there all the time. Very amusing. The windows got noisy when moving them up and down. We had wind noise from the windows that took two trips to the dealership to get corrected. The vehicle came to us from the factory with damage to the interior trim in five places. We had ordered ahead of time and thats the thanks we get? The "leatherette" vinyl looks nice but is very stinky for years from off-gassing. The rubber matts are very smelly, too. Cloth wasnt available with an automatic transmission which is stupid. Youre forced to buy a sunroof you dont want and smelly vinyl seats. I can go on but the real scandal is how we started having problems with the emissions system near the end of the warranty. We took the vehicle to Fairfield Volkswagen three times for "repairs". The first one was them turning off the issue in the computer and telling us to wait and see. The same problem happened again (the urea system told us it would shut off the car in X miles). The third time they said they had done this and that. Well, then the warranty expired and the same problem happened again. I took it to another VW shop in Cincinnati and had to fight to get VW to cover the repair under warranty. Well, apparently that "repair" didnt actually repair anything. My spouse, when it acted up again, took it back to Fairfield because we started having tire pressure warnings. They replaced all four tire sensors, claiming they were faulty. They also claimed the entire urea system needed to be replaced. He ended up paying $2400 for these repairs – repairs that had allegedly been done already by the other dealership under warranty. The reason the tire pressure light had come on? There was a nail in the back tire that VW never found and repaired. None of those tire sensors were actually bad. I bet the urea system had already been repaired by the other dealership and Fairfield knew it could scam my spouse because hes too nice a person so they probably either ripped out the replacement system or just charged us for something they didnt even do. So, we have a car with poor resale value thanks to DieselGate and its a ticking time bomb, knowing VWs legendary reputation for reliability. And we cant rely on the dealerships to even remove a nail from a tire rather than charge us thousands for alleged repairs to things that should have been fixed before and which werent a problem in the first place. VW doesnt just lie to the world its dealerships have a reputation for lying to customers.