A watershed moment has been reached in SOTW history with the 24-trumpet arrival of the Volkswagen Phaeton.
In horsey times a phaeton was a light, open, sporty, four-wheeled carriage. Even the lightest Phaeton, the 1,995kg 3.2-litre petrol V6, wasn’t light, open or sporty, but it did have four wheels and it did carry people. Thanks to VW hardman Ferdinand Piëch who came up with the idea of an S-Class-smashing luxury saloon for the mass market, it was like no Volkswagen that had gone before.
Piëch was an unforgiving kind of dude with a reputation for firing anyone who made the same mistake twice – a fate he cleverly avoided himself by making sure that his own mistakes were always different. Piëch had watched Mercedes stride into VW’s traditional small-car market with its A-Class. He also knew that Mercedes was making big money from big cars, so with an eye for revenge he put zwei and zwei together and came up with the Phaeton.
A dedicated Phaeton factory was built almost entirely out of glass in Dresden. It had a Studio that the customer could visit in order to choose paints and cabin materials. Later, they could return to watch their car’s two-day hand assembly process. There was adaptive air suspension, adaptive radar cruise and a bewildering range of engine choices including a 6.0-litre W12 petrol, a 5.0-litre V10 diesel, a 4.2-litre V8, that 3.2 petrol Shed mentioned earlier, and a 222hp/332lb ft 3.0-litre TDI diesel with six-speed auto and 4MOTION AWD as per the one we’ve got here.
The Phaeton was an engineering tour de force that would surely be a hammer blow to the likes of Mercedes, Audi and BMW. The sales target was set at 300,000. Everyone was excited.
Everyone, that is, apart from those used to riding in premium German cars. Whether it was behind the wheel or in the back, they really didn’t like the idea of sitting in any sort of VW, even one that was specifically designed to be able to hum along at 300km/h (186mph) all day on the autobahn with the air temp at 50 deg C while a four-zone, 25-motor ‘draughtless’ climate system kept the cabin at 22 deg C. VW had spent crazy money on Phaetonic hardware but nowhere near enough on putting across the message that buyers were getting something much more than just an inflated Passat.
In the end, fewer than 85,000 Phaetons were built between 2002 and 2016. China turned out to be the biggest market, followed by Korea. The car’s 2004 incursion into the US market was terminated after just two years with hardly any vehicles sold.
Regardless of that commercial spanking, as late as the mid-2010s VW was still talking seriously about launching a second-gen Phaeton by 2020. As you might have noticed, that didn’t happen. Instead, we got the Arteon in 2017. Today, the transparent factory in Dresden is used to make electric VWs. You can go for a walk around it if you like. It’s quite the tourist draw.
So, why did VW not go for a gen-two Phaeton for the 2020s? Sure, the medium-sized saloon had long since died on its Arsch, but as Shed is constantly saying to the postmistress, there’s always going to be a strong level of interest in big top-enders.
Maybe someone at Volkswagen had read up on their Greek mythology and come across the story of Phaethon, an impulsive youth who was constantly hassling his dad, the sun god Helios, for a shot in his flying golden sun-chariot. Against his better judgement, Helios put him on the insurance and threw him the keys, or reins as they were called back then.
Predictably, Phaethon got a bit giddy and lost control of the rig, setting the earth ablaze and scorching the plains of Africa. Boss god Zeus was so cheesed off by the mess Phaethon had made he zapped him with a thunderbolt and hurled his flaming body into the River Eridanos. Justice was instant and quite harsh in the old days. Nowadays of course it would be more like six points and a 200 drachma fine.
Anyway, returning to the unscorched plains of Yorkshire where this Phateon lives, we can see some signs of wear to the bolster and control panel on the driver’s seat, and a slightly wonky lower window trim piece on the passenger door. The door shut line looks OK though, as do all the rest of them. In fact apart from a bit of scabbage on the one wheel we’re shown in the pics it looks to be in good fettle. There’s no obvious sign of many plutocratic buttocks having polished the perches in the rear compartment, so maybe it’s been mainly privately owned.
The MOT is short but the last certificate had just one advisory for a worn rear tyre. Previous testing notes have been about nothing worse than brake wear or slightly poor headlight alignment. Unfortunately, there’s no getting away from the fact that there are many, many other ways in which a Phaeton can hurt you financially, and that’s not just on the fuel costs (officially 29mpg combined, 22mpg urban in the 2,250kg 3.0 diesel). Shed isn’t going to go into any of them here as he’s managed to use up all of his SOTW word allocation on all that mythology stuff. The two he’s got left for this para are ‘electronic complications’.
Quite a purchase though at £2,000, and potentially quite an experience too. Just try not to drive it too close to the sun, a simple enough task in the UK.
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