I bought this car new in September of 2000 through a buying service, Greenlight.com. Their local agent turned out to be at Congressional Volkswagen in Rockville, MD. Greenlight located a car with the options I wanted and one of my color choices in future inventory at Congressional, so I put the order in and just about exactly 4 weeks later I picked up the car at the dealer. This is the first new car I've ever owned.
NOTE: Greenlight.com no longer exists as a separate entity.
The car is Indigo blue with beige leather interior. The V6 with the manual transmission is a great combination. If the 4Motion all-wheel drive system didn't require an automatic transmission, I probably would have gotten that too.
I got the in-dash CD player separately from a different dealer and installed it myself. It was not a very difficult job and certainly not worth paying $70 labor to the dealer to have it installed.
Recently a VW 6-CD changer became available that takes up only 1 DIN slot in the dash (same as the old single-CD player). The changer is made by Sony of France and is not sold through the US dealer network. You can get it from PG Performance who is the only current importer of the unit that I know of. I sold the single-CD player seen in the pictures below and installed the 6-CD changer, which is fantastic. I need to get some pictures of that up on the site.
This is a great car and I highly recommend it to anyone who might be considering it. It's completely stock currently (except for the 6-CD changer) but I plan to eventually install the European headlight switch which will allow separate control of the parking lights and headlights. Once I get the Euro switch installed I plan to install the rear fog light and wire up the rear fog light indicator on the instrument panel.
Passat update 1/30/02: I have now owned this Passat for 1 year and 3 months and in that time I have put just over 20,000 miles on the car. I have had no trouble with the car and haven't had to do any work on it outside of regular maintenance. This is a great car and I never regret buying it. I still haven't gotten around to installing the Euroswitch and the rear fog light, but they're still on the list.
Passat update 2/17/03: This update is long overdue, but the Passat has been sold. I sold it in November 2002 to make way for my new 2003 MINI Cooper S. It went to a good home, so all is well. Below are some pics taken in the summer of 2002.
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Below are some pictures of the car a couple days after delivery in October 2000. Click on the thumbnails for full-size
pictures.
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