Here are some recent renderings of what the 8th generation Passat will look like when it hits the showrooms sometime in 2014.

The 2014 Passat will be the first Passat with Volkswagen’s new kit architecture as its underpinnings. The Mk 8 Passat will no longer sit on a platform, but will be built using Volkswagen’s MQB, or Modularer QuerBaukasten. (“Modular Transverse Kit” or more hifalutin, “Modular Transverse Matrix.”) This new kit architecture covers pretty much everything in Volkswagen’s future, from the Polo to the Passat.

The kit doesn’t cover anything higher. Between the B-Class Passat and the D-Class Phaeton is a C-Class sized gap. Rumor had it that this gap would be closed with a Super-Passat (or value-sized Phaeton), a project that has haunted the hallways of Wolfsburg’s Forschung und Entwicklung (R&D Department) under the codename VW 511). This project is said to be off the table, but we don't believe it.



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