One of the big surprises about the new, ninth-generation Volkswagen Passat – in fact, perhaps the only big surprise – was the news that it would only be offered as an estate. Even that’s not too surprising, though – the market for four-doors has been steadily shrinking in Europe for a long time, to the extent that former segment mainstays like Ford and Vauxhall have stopped selling them here.
It’s a different story in China, where the saloon car remains a popular choice. As a result, China will get a new Passat saloon, images of which have appeared on the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s website. It’s called the Passat Pro, and it’ll be built locally by VW’s joint venture with Chinese carmaker SAIC – yes, the same one that owns the MG brand.
Volkswagen Passat Pro – rear
At first glance, the Passat Pro looks like a straight-up four-door version of the estate we get in Europe, but it’s not quite that simple. It’s only the front that’s shared – look closely along the side, and you’ll spot that some of the panels are entirely different.
That’s because, rather than being a simple saloon version of the Euro-market Passat, it’s actually a lightly restyled Magotan, another Chinese-market VW saloon which for a long time was effectively a rebadge of… the eighth-gen Euro-market Passat. Following? No, us neither.
Volkswagen Passat
At any rate, they’re all based on the same MQB Evo architecture, so are closely related anyway.
It’s all a bit complicated, but essentially, Chinese buyers will soon have the choice between two identically-sized and very similar-looking mid-size VW saloons – the Magotan and Passat Pro. It’s not clear at this point if one will be positioned as more upmarket than the other, but neither of them is related to the Passat estate we get in Europe, except for the fact that they are. Got it? Good.