2022 Volkswagen Arteon 140TSI Elegance review

The Volkswagen Arteon had a little breather after launching here a few years back. A little bit of WLTP, a little bit of plague and no doubt a healthy dose of brave pills later, Wolfburg’s Australian outpost told us in May that they’re bringing sexy back “because we can”.

It makes a good headline and seems as good a reason as any. It’s slightly puzzling, of course. SUVs rule the dealer forecourts, with just weirdos like me (and possibly you) making a beeline for the lower, sleeker design offered in a more traditional body shape.

You can also buy a Passat – for now, at least – but that’s slacks and Hush Puppies compared to the diamond-studded Nike special editions of the Arteon.

Like many manufacturers willing to keep the sedan – and wagon – alive, conservative sedans just aren’t cutting it. Get someone from Volkswagen in the right frame of mind and they’ll even tell you the Passat is in a fair bit of trouble. That’s a car that used to be massively popular.

So you need to stand out, and what better way to do it than with the big-grilled, exuberant-for-a-VW presence of the Arteon.

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Pricing and features

The Arteon is not only back, but you can also choose from four distinct versions across two body styles and two drivelines. The two body styles are both gorgeous, the sedan and the Shooting Brake, the latter a very lifestyle focussed wagon. The sedan is really a five-door hatchback but is styled like a booted four-door.

Specification levels are aligned to engine output, hence the offerings comprising 140 TSI Elegance and 206 TSI R-Line, both available as either a sedan or Shooting Brake (wagon).

The Elegance starts you off at $61,740 for the sedan and $63,740 for the Shooting Brake, both before on-road costs.

You get 19-inch alloy wheels, keyless entry and start, three-zone climate control, heated and ventilated front seats, heated outboard rear seats, automatic Matrix LED headlights, adaptive damping (DCC in VW-speak) interior ambient lighting, 11-speaker Harman Kardon premium audio, digital dashboard, reversing camera, front and rear parking sensors, around-view camera, power tailgate, Nappa leather interior and a full-size alloy spare.

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Most of the extra cash in the 206TSI R-Line goes to the driveline, with more power and all-wheel drive.

The R-Line has rather more sporty-looking seats (which lose the cooling function), lots of R-Line badging and embroidery, an upgraded deadlocking system and 20-inch wheels. The sedan relieves you of $68,740 and the Shooting Brake $70,740 (both again before on-road costs), exactly seven grand more than the 140TSI.

VW calls the Arteon’s media system Discover Pro and it comes with a 9.2-inch touchscreen featuring a clever proximity sensor that knows when your digits are near and responds accordingly. You get wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto plus DAB+ digital radio to keep you amused. Rather curiously, the sedan gets AM/FM reception while the Shooting Brake only scores FM, although that in itself isn’t unusual in European cars.

Definitely weird are the wipers, which don’t have an auto setting. It’s hardly the end of the world, but a bit odd in an otherwise tech-heavy car. Given how much rain fell on the Arteon while I had it, I kind of missed the auto function.

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Rather pleasingly, metallic, pearl or premium metallic colours are freebies while only the $800 Oryx white pearlescent is an option. The only other available options on either body style are $2000 sunroofs. The sedan’s is a panoramic style roof while the Shooting Brake’s is a more traditional sunroof for the same price.

On the safety front, you’ll find nine airbags, the usual braking and stability controls, driver fatigue detection, lane-keep assist, adaptive cruise control, reverse cross-traffic alert, rear auto emergency braking, forward AEB with pedestrian detection and a reversing camera. VW also includes a feature called manoeuvre braking, which helps stop you from bumping into things at low speed in places like garages.

There’s not much happening in this space, and if it is, it’s much more expensive. You could kind of squint and suggest that the Audi A5 is in the same segment, but it’s really a size bigger, closer to the A7 which is rather more expensive. BMW’s 4 Series Gran Coupe is coming, but again, it’s more 5 Series-sized and so an 8 Series Gran Coupe is in a completely different league.

Obviously, VW still has its own Passat (for a little longer). It's cheaper by some margin, but not nearly this pretty. A Kia Stinger, apart from its lack of Euro-ness, is probably the Arteon's nearest rival.

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Comfort and space

Inside the Arteon is an enormous amount of occupant space. While headroom isn’t as lofty as the Passat, it’s still pretty good as the seats are down as low as is practical.

You won’t notice any deficits in the front unless you’re spectacularly tall and my lofty son, towering over his parents at six-foot-four, lounged around in the rear seat for a 200km run up to the Hunter Valley without a moment’s complaint.

He had heaps of legroom, just enough headroom and if he wanted to stretch, could get his feet under the front seat. He also had room for three cups – well, two cups and either an espresso-sized cup or one of those narrow cans those stinky energy drinks come in – a 12-volt power supply, map pockets, USB-C ports, air vents and his own climate control setting. And big bottle holders in each door.

We had two cup holders up front, a small bin under the centre armrest, space under the climate controls for a phone (but no wireless charging, sadly), two USB-C ports (hands up who always has the wrong cable) and big door pockets with bottle holders.

The boot is deceptively big and accessible through a large liftback. Amusingly, the sedan has barely less cargo space with the rear seats in place, with 563 litres versus the Shooting Brake’s 656 litres. Drop the seats and you have 1557 in the sedan and 1632 in the wagon.

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On the road

All four versions of the Arteon have a 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine and the VW Group’s seven-speed DSG dual-clutch automatic transmission. In the 140TSI, you have 140kW between 4200rpm and 6000rpm and 320Nm between 1500rpm and 4100rpm driving the front wheels.

Moving up to the 206TSI, VW extracts 206kW between 4950 and 6600rpm and 400Nm between 2000 and 4950rpm, driving all four wheels. So it’s somewhere between the outputs of Golfs GTI and R, tasked with hauling a limo.

The 140TSI runs on 95 RON fuel while the 206 is a bit pickier and requires 98 RON unleaded. Both versions feature a petrol particulate filter, too.

The 140TSI's claimed combined cycle figure is listed at 6.2L/100km and the 206TSI at 7.7L/100km. The 140TSI I drove spent a lot of time on the freeway and about a third of the time in the city and suburbs, returning 7.4L/100km, which is pretty reasonable.

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Our car for the week was a 140TSI Elegance sedan in the very attractive silver Pyrite Silver. The front seats start out pretty comfortable but after some time behind the wheel, they felt a bit firm on the lower back, so you might have to crank the rake on the seatback to get long-term comfortable.

The four driving modes available are Eco, Comfort, Normal and Sport (as well as an Individual setting for tailoring various combinations to your tastes) but as I soon discovered, leave it Normal and don’t touch it.

The Arteon is quite firm from the get-go. Not uncomfortable or tiresome, but reassuringly so. You just don’t need it any firmer than Normal because it’s not a car you hustle. Despite the big P-Zeros wrapping the wheels, there really isn’t any point in taking the scenic route, at least not at speed. And that’s perfectly okay because this is quite a cruiser.

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I didn’t think anything of jumping in for the 400km round-trip on a sunny Friday morning. I pointed the Arteon north and once I’d got it out of Sport mode, it absolutely battered the miles into submission.

The only thing to upset the cabin’s serenity was a mix of higher speeds and some very, very noisy Pirelli rubber. I’m quick to blame the otherwise excellent Italian tyres because the electric Volvo XC40 also had them and suffered from similar noise levels.

The adaptive cruise control feature is very good; so good in fact that you sort of forget that you need to pay attention to the fact the car has gently decelerated to match the speed of the car in front. While this feature isn’t exclusive to the Arteon, the whole package of lane tracing, lane-keep assist and adaptive cruise made it extremely easy to cover distance.

Add in some filthy weather on the return trip and that extra safety net was most welcome, all the while ride dealing with the horrific surfaces of the M1 on the run to the Hunter and back. Just maybe, when the time comes, throw on a quieter set of tyres, because the Arteon’s chassis isn’t really built to need P-Zeros and a quieter set of tyres would render the car far more agreeable than it already is.

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Ownership

Volkswagen offers a five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty, which comes with a year of roadside assist to get you going. When you service with VW, you get an extension of a further 12 months' cover.

You can pre-purchase your servicing via a care plan or go with VW’s assured price servicing regime. A five-year plan for any of the Arteons is $2500, with the three-year option going for $1600.

The first saves you $553 over the pay-as-you-go prices and includes the first service for free. The three-year plan saves you $206. It’s not startlingly cheap but nor is it wildly expensive in either case.

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VERDICT

While the Arteon costs quite a bit more than the Passat, the extra dosh goes on a thing of real beauty, just like the cars I’ve already mentioned from Audi and, if you’re into it, BMW.

Stacked with tech, strong engines and some serious road presence, it nails the brief for someone looking to stand apart from the SUV crowd and the sedan crowd.

While the segment is rapidly shrinking – and that’s a sad fact – it’s fantastic that Volkswagen is still keen to send something so pretty and so cool into battle. It’s not cheap, but neither are any of its rivals. And let’s face it, you can’t beat exclusivity.

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Volkswagen Arteon specifications