Spotted: 2007 VW Phaeton V8

A friend asked me last week about used late-model executive stuff and if there was anything I could recommend. I gave it some thought and suggested a VW Phaeton. 'Hmm, hadn't thought about one of those' was his response. Judging by the used values it looks like a lot of people think the same way.

Like the Audi A8 before it the Phaeton has fallen short of sales expectations and has slipped almost unnoticed into the used market, but there is an upside to this. Like the A8 it's a bloody good piece of kit (same underpinnings as the Bentley GT) that you can get now for buttons and which will be capable of another couple of hundred thousand miles of well-equipped, smooth, executive V8 wafting.

This one from our classifieds was up for £17,450 last week, but as of Friday the vendors have reduce that to £14,950 (which, assuming they still have profit in it at that price makes you wonder just how much margin was in it at £17,450...)

What makes the new figure all the more interesting is that the vendors are a VW main dealer who have just carried out the latest service to add to the rest of the main-dealer history and given it a full MOT.

Of course if you really want to get noticed then this might not be your kind of thing, despite the 19-inch upgraded rims.

Those who do are more likely to go for a Merc or a Beemer (although a 750i of similar vintage will set you back several grand more) which is a shame for VW because those are the exact customers it wanted to buy the Phaeton.

But if you're looking for a 'full-size' car that is smooth, value for money, fully equipped, and which features a superb engine and top build quality then you might want to consider one - especially at this kind of price.

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Believe it or not VW is still persisting with the Phaeton; they've even given it Passat-look facelift. You can read what Riggers thought about it below

The Phaeton range also received a fairly significant facelift recently (once again making it look spectacularly similar to the latest Passat - I never will understand the thinking behind that), so we thought we'd get one in to see how the old girl was getting on.

Despite the tweaks, the 'anti-Bentley' (it's the sober accountant brother to the Conti Flying Spur's flash stockbroker) is beginning to feel its age a little.

It's mostly in the details, too. The intricate electronic boot-opening mechanism is still truly a wonder to behold, the air conditioning is as cold as you like, and there's no doubting the quality of the construction, from the thunking of the doors to the solidity of the dash materials.

But why does the gear selector look as if it comes from an early noughties Audi A6? Where's the keyless entry, the stop-start function/keyless go, the electronic parking brake, the iDrive-style controller?

These are all things you expect of a top-end luxobarge these days, especially one costing £82k, as our W12 test car did, and the big Vee-Dub just can't deliver them.

Talking of engines, VW has now quietly dropped the W12 from its line-up (despite having kept it on the UK price lists long enough for the UK press office to order a car) and so, what with the W12 now gone and the V8 having shuffled off some time ago, the only option left is the airport taxi-spec 3.0-litre V6 diesel.

And that's a bit of a shame. All right, so the W12 only ever sold in tiny numbers over here, and a W-shape clearly isn't the ideal layout in refinement terms because there's occasionally an unseemly amount of vibration through your feet and into the cabin (especially at low revs), but it really is an amusingly beefy powerplant. And there's something genuinely fun about hustling a massive 6.0-litre limo that looks like an oversized mini-cab along country lanes - it makes you feel like a diplomat escaping terrorists in a Hollywood movie. And that can't be a bad thing, can it?

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