What's the news?

Later this year, we can expect to see Volkswagen's eighth generation of Passat, a crucial new model in the brand's drive to become the world's number one automobile manufacturer by 2018. Car Enthusiast was therefore invited to Volkswagen's Wolfsburg HQ to get the low-down on the tech that it is hoped will make the Passat 'B8' the D-segment leader it was before the BMW 3 Series took over - and possibly even a car to cream a number of E-segment conquest sales.

Exterior

We can't tell you what it will truly look like, as Volkswagen is keeping the wraps on the full car for now; its static preview will be on July 3 before a full global reveal at the Paris Motor Show in October. We did get to see the light clusters, though, which were... nice, while there are some design sketches of roughly what the B8 version will look like to whet your appetite.

What we can tell you is that, despite being shorter on the outside (down 2mm on the current 'B7' model at 4,767mm all in) with a 40mm reduction to the front overhang (now 1,304mm), plus it will be more spacious for both passengers and clobber within. This is because the cabin - measured from the base of the windscreen to the rear passengers' hips - is 33mm longer at 1,830mm, with more headroom (a 26mm increase) thanks to seats that are mounted 10mm lower at the front. This allows the designers to keep a low, 'sporty' roofline without cramping taller drivers' style.

LED lights will feature front and rear, although there is a halogen headlamp spec for some of the lower models. However, the top LED High-equipped cars will get Adaptive Front Lighting with Dynamic Light Assist; basically, a fancy system that changes the field of light according to road speed, ambient lighting conditions and other cars in the vicinity. Interestingly, at the back the LED taillight displays change shape under braking, designed to increase awareness for people following the Passat. The normal mode sees a C-shaped LED line round the edge of the cluster with two horizontal lines side by side in the centre. When the Passat brakes, those two lines change to vertical lights towards the outer edges of the lamps.

Interior

We mentioned clobber and the boot deserves more of a mention. It's bigger on both the saloon and estate versions of the Passat, with the latter featuring a number of clever gimmicks to make loading up its cavernous cargo bay easier. So let's look at those. At 650 litres in capacity (up to the window line and with the rear seats in place), the B8 Passat Estate has an extra 47 litres of space to play with compared to the outgoing car. It will have 40:20:40 split rear seats for maximum flexibility on loading, a 2.85m-long load space with all the rear bench folded and a two-level boot floor, something we've already seen in the Skoda Octavia. There will also be an automatic opening and closing boot - to open, you kick your foot underneath the rear bumper - and a sliding 'Loading Master' platform that is on rails, so that you can put really heavy items on it at the boot opening and then slide them towards the rear seats with ease.

Meanwhile, there's tech aplenty for the humans inside, the big news being the car's 12.3-inch TFT display in the instrument cluster with a 1,440 x 540 pixel resolution and the ability to generate 2D and 3D graphics. This is a fully configurable display that can show pretty much everything you'd desire, such as driving data, infotainment sources, the direction map for the satnav and obviously the crucial, 'traditional' dials such as the speedo, rev counter and fuel/temp gauges. Despite this classy unit in front of the driver, which will also be seen in the third-generation Audi TT, there will still be the now-mandatory centre console touchscreen for navigation input, infotainment control and general car settings, which itself will range up to eight inches in size depending on car specification.

Further tech includes Active Cruise Control with Stop & Go functionality (so on DSG cars you can set cruise and leave it, even if the motorway comes to a dead halt in front of you), autonomous emergency braking with a pedestrian detection function, enhanced automated parking ability (not just parallel parking but also slotting the car into side-by-side spaces), full in-car connectivity via Car-Net functionality and even a new Trailer Assist feature - which helps you with those tricky manoeuvres when you have to reverse with a load hitched to the back of your Passat. Although presumably it won't sit there shouting 'left hand down a bit, mate, yeah, yeah, that's great, keep coming back, keep coming, keep coming... oh. You've hit a rockery'.

Mechanicals

It is, as everything seems to be in Volkswagen Group these days, an MQB platform underneath. Volkswagen has trimmed up to 85kg from the car via four main areas: 33kg from the body; 9kg from the chassis; 40kg from the powertrain; and 3kg from the electrics. In terms of the structural savings, a lot of the reduction is provided by the use of high-strength steel (it amounted to 15 per cent of a B7 Passat's body but will now represent 27 per cent of the B8) and never-used before ultra-high-strength steel (17 per cent). The body-in-white is said to weigh less than 280kg.

If you're the kind of person who laments the passing of the Passats W8 and R36 (I know I am), the new BiTurbo TDI model promises to be a 21st century performance Passat, in that it has a 2.0-litre, four-cylinder twin-turbo diesel engine with 240hp and a colossal 500Nm of torque from just 1,750rpm. It will be mated to 4Motion all-wheel drive and a seven-speed dual-clutch automated gearbox (DSG), to make a capable, all-weather Passat. Volkswagen quotes an NEDC combined economy figure of 53.3mpg for this motor, which is a pretty damn impressive mix of frugality and force. Below this, there are two single-turbo capacities in the EA288 engine family, a 1.6 TDI with 120hp kicking things off and 150- and 190hp versions of the 2.0-litre TDI engine.

The BiTurbo has both low-pressure and high-pressure turbochargers that can boost up to 3.8 bar, a crankcase, crankshaft, con-rods and pistons that are reinforced to cope with the pressure and piezo injectors from Bosch that run to 2,500 bar of pressure.

The petrol line-up will consist of the EA211 family of four-cylinder turbo motors, with Active Cylinder Management on offer - meaning cylinders two and three shut down under reduced loads at certain road speeds, with the car running on just pots one and four in order to return better economy. There will be 125- and 150hp 1.4-litre TSIs, a 180hp 1.8-litre and 220- and 280hp versions of the 2.0-litre unit.

Anything else?

It's 41 years since the Passat nameplate first emerged into the world and the motoring scene has obviously changed significantly since then. So not only will there be a selection of Euro 6-compliant turbocharged petrol and diesel models, a plug-in hybrid petrol-electric (PHEV) Passat B8 will also be offered.

It uses a 156hp 1.4 TSI petrol engine supplemented by a 109hp electric motor (a stator and rotor between the dual-mass flywheel and clutch in the transmission) to make 211hp and 400Nm peak outputs. Volkswagen is claiming the Passat PHEV can travel 50km in zero-emission EV mode, will have a range of more than 620 miles in full hybrid mode and should get near the Golf GTE's 188mpg and 35g/km figures while knocking off 0-62mph in less than eight seconds on its way to 130mph flat out.