It’s about time I told the story of this car. A few weeks ago or so (time kinda just blends together nowadays) I sold the Nissan after it developed some major engine issues. I didn’t really want the Nissan anyway, so it was never supposed to be more than a Gambler at best. My willingness to fix it was...not much. In the end I decided to clean it up, sell it, and I ended up making some coin off it.
This left me without a Gambler car, so off to Marketplace I went! I decided I wanted an AWD car, but not something you’d expect. Everyone shows up to these things in a Subaru.
I knew Audis have Quattros and VWs have 4Motions, so that’s the direction I went. I gathered up a list of vehicles from a few Audis (like a REALLY beat up TT for $900), to some 4Motions, to even an AWD Volvo or two. But then...then I found a Passat W8 4Motion three hours away in Michigan for a really low price. A casual search showed that a running W8 asked at least $3+k, but this was what I’d say is “Gambler priced”. Plus, it’s manual!
I knew W8s were special cars that threaten to bankrupt their owners. I even knew they were rare. But I thought they were more or less base V8 Phaeton rare where nobody really wants them or cares about them. The ad also basically made the car sound like a real junker. The ad essentially described the right side of the car to be so broken that it was unworthy of even having a picture in the ad. In fact, the ad made it sound like it didn’t run at all..
But my plans changed when I showed up at the seller’s house. It was in better condition than described, ran and drove great, and came with a folder of service records.
Apparently the first owner meticulously took care of the car since new, going to the dealership for everything. Then during a snowstorm last year someone rear-ended the car, causing it to slide into a pole. Said pole crumpled the right front fender, the right front door, and killed the sunroof.
That’s when the first owner called it quits and sold it to the guy I bought it from. That guy grabbed bits from a base model Passat and fixed the damage. He intended on the car being a winter beater so he didn’t care if the bits matched or even were attached well (see that fender and the unrepaired plastic skirt). Indeed, there appears to be no structural damage, just trashed parts.
I parted ways with $800 as I cursed about trying to buy a car to beat up and not wanting to do that at all.
While on the way home I did some research and found that not only are W8s crazy rare in the States, but manual ones like this one are absurdly rare. As in, between wagons and sedans there are fewer than 500 manual W8s in the entire country. On top of this, but those who know about them absolutely love them.
As I enjoyed slapping the car through the gears I decided this would be my resto project and a car to keep in the bucket list, not a car to offroad.
Well, crap.
So, how does it drive? Even with the misfire (bad coil) it’s the fastest VW (maybe CAR?) I’ve ever driven. It’s not lighting anything on fire, but it’s way faster than you’d expect ANY Passat to be. And the 4Motion system is pretty cool. All wheels are powered at all times. So even though it has the power to convert tires into smoke it just has too much traction to do so. And the sound, oh my god the sound. The second owner fitted a custom exhaust when he bought it. He showed me a video he made and it sounds almost exactly like this:
He explained that he did break one of the flex pipes loading it onto a trailer, and so currently with the bad flex pipe and the misfire it sounds like a really pissed off WRX. And the misfire is an easy fix. There are four coils in the engine bay that clearly haven’t been replaced in a long time. While the first owner was meticulous, the second owner was...less so.
Speaking of which, another thing I love about these is that the decorative engine cover? That’s not just decorative!
So, what’s wrong with it? On the drive home I compiled a list in order of severity:
1. Needs new sunroof glass. The PO attempted to glue plastic over the hole instead of fixing it the right way. It didn’t work.
2. Needs new #6 coil. Have one in hand, just need to install it. If it works I’ll then buy the other three that clearly haven’t been touched in ever.
3. Have dent on left rear quarter pulled.
4. Cosmetic parts: Passenger door, door card, new passenger seat, and new trunklid.
5. The factory Monsoon radio doesn’t appear to like the speaker in the base model Passat door. That means it works for about ten seconds until it gets pissed off and bricks itself. That’s not too much of a problem though as I plan to replace it with the Chinese market headunit with bluetooth, the RCN210.
As I ranked it highest on the list, I decided to tackle the sunroof first. To protect the car while it faced frequent rain before I could get to the local pick-n-pull, I taped some vinyl to the sunroof hole then covered it with a tent rainfly. It didn’t look great, but it worked.
Sheryl tried to surprise me by getting the sunroof fixed while I was away at work. Oh did she learn that one doesn’t simply find a mechanic willing to work on a W8.
Of the several dozen shops she called, only a couple was even willing to see the car. Most were like “oh hell no, we won’t touch that car, too rare” and the few that were willing to work on it gave her a price of $4,000 to fix the sunroof. She did get TONS of offers to buy it off me though. If this were a flip I could quadruple my money right now! Apparently while none of the shops wanted to work on it, most of them wanted to buy it. lol
Finally, Sheryl and I went on an adventure to our local pick-n-pull to grab some sweet sunroof loot. I originally thought I just needed glass and the cradle the glass sits in..
But upon inspection of the pieces at the yard, I discovered they’re all basically a part of one unit that slides along the track..
So we took the whole darn thing. Took me about 28 minutes in total to liberate the entire sunroof cassette from the yard’s car.
The intake photo for the Passat I took the sunroof from showed some really sweet headlights that would have went with the black paint of the W8 absolutely perfectly. Blast, someone already took them.
Removing the sunroof cassette was actually really easy. All it took was removing the headliner, itself held on with some screws (the “oh crap” handles, mainly) and some weak glue.
$4,000 to do what I could do with a couple hours and $35? Nah, it just sounds to me like the shop didn’t want to do the job. That’s okay, I already have an independent for things I won’t do myself.
For now I’ve simply fitted the glass in place and covered it with plastic. I’ll return later this week to install the full cassette, water drains and all. Then immediately after will be four coils and fixing the hole in the exhaust.
Replacing the seat, door, and trunk will take some time as I’ll have to find a black Passat for the trunk and door and a Passat with black leather for the door card and seat. If I’m lucky, that will all be the same car.
Funny enough, the Passat W8 was never a bucket list car or even a dream car. I never thought of it as more than just “the Passat with a bigger engine” but my oh my was I wrong. This is exactly the kind of wacky car that belongs in my bucket list. So after it’s all fixed up it’ll join my Audi TT as a dream level car I’ll try to keep until it’s pried from my cold dead hands. This W8 only has 100,000 miles. That may be a lot of miles for a W8 (ha) but I think its best years are not yet behind it!
Funny enough, I haven’t even opened the trunk yet. He said there are a ton of goodies back there from brand new taillights to tools. I only caught a glimpse of them when he gave me a tour of the car. xD