2002 Volkswagen Passat W8: A New W in VW; Once north of 3000 revs, there is no mistaking that there's something potent beneath the hood.(Evaluation)

Anyone who wandered into the European launch of Volkswagen's Passat W8 might have thought he had stumbled into a technical briefing about the autobahn. VW officials kept talking about it as a ``bridge,'' this Passat that features the company's first eight-cylinder engine. Their meaning was not concrete and steel, but a mental bridge-a state of mind-to the next automotive level that VW president Ferdinand Piech wants the company to reach.

VW has long been considered a maker of quality small and midsize cars. With the Passat W8, VW launches the first of several upper-segment cars that will include an as-yet-unnamed sport/utility vehicle in 2003, a Giugiaro-designed sports coupe and a luxury sedan, the D1, due out next year. It seems Piech has a strategy for the ``People's Car'' that would have its ``people'' a little more well-heeled than in the past, taking dead aim at an audience that prefers cars wearing the three-pointed star.

The engine in the Passat W8 is all-new, but the car itself is not. The present-generation Passat was launched in November 1997 as a '98 model. It was significantly overhauled this year with new fenders, hood and a larger engine bay to accommodate the bigger engine in anticipation of this car. Prior to the W8, Passats came with either the 170-hp 1.8T base engine or the optional 190-hp 2.8-liter V6 shared with Audi. More than half of all Passats sold in the States are equipped with the base engine.

Customers can't order just the W8 engine, though. The Passat W8 is a complete package, treated as another model in the ever-growing VW lineup. Along with the eight-cylinder you get VW's 4Motion all-wheel-drive system and a full slate of luxury items including leather and wood interior trim. Other than choosing your stereo system, the only major choice for buyers is to decide on the sedan or wagon, and color.

In simple terms, the W8 (the engine, not the car) began life as two of VW's modular-designed VR6 engines mated together, with the back two cylinders of each block being lopped off. The cylinders in each V are offset only 15 degrees. The two narrow-angle Vs then make up the W configuration, with the cylinder banks 72 degrees apart. The 4.0-liter engine features seven revolving shafts. Four are overhead variable-control camshafts activating the 32 valves; one is the five-bearing crankshaft and the other two are balance shafts to counter unwanted vibrations. The balance shafts revolve in opposite directions at twice the speed of the crankshaft. The crankshaft journals are offset by 180 degrees to each other, resulting in a ``flat'' crankshaft similar to many racing engines. The W8's firing order of 1-5-2-6-4-8-3-7 is typical of ``an Italian sports car,'' according to VW's research and development guru Martin Winterkorn. (He was careful not to mention the name of Fiat's sports car-building and F1 racing subsidiary.)

The result is an engine producing 275 hp at 6000 rpm and 273 lb-ft at 2750 rpm. In comparing the W8 to Audi's 4.2-liter V8, the W8 is less efficient, as the V8 produces 73.8 hp per liter vs. the W8 at 68.75 hp per liter. But in this case, size does matter, and the smaller size allows the W8 to fit into the Passat engine bay, where the 4.2-liter V8 wouldn't.

VW's VR engines are approximately 25 percent shorter than standard inline engines of the same displacement, and a similar size reduction is represented by the W8 as opposed to a V8. With the cast-aluminum block and heads, the power-to-weight ratio for the engine itself is better than the V8s available in the VW family. And because of the modular design, the basic engine configuration can be transformed to a 6.0-liter 12 or even an 8.0-liter 16-cylinder powerplant, with shared components all along the way. That means a savings in production costs. At one time, there was even talk of an 18-cylinder engine for possible use in a VW-owned Bugatti.