Sounds like a four-door
This time, in ‘Guilty Pleasure’, Stéphan Vermeulen brings up a car that he might be better off keeping to himself. He saw something in the Volkswagen Santana, which was difficult to understand by the public at the time. It looked like a Passat with a butt and was actually a kind of Audi 80.
I thought the Volkswagen Passat B2 hatchback was one of the ugliest cars of the 1980s. The Variant was still OK, but making five-door hatchbacks in the middle class look elegant was something the French had a better handle on, so to speak. . However, that’s when I saw a Santana for the first time. A rarity on Dutch roads, and the proportions seemed much better than those of the five-door. That was really a car with a severed butt, while the protrusion never before seen on the largest Volkswagen of that time matched the angular design so well. Additionally, the Santana had Scirocco-style lights.
The stern was a typical glued-on trunk according to the ‘child-drawing-car idea’. It was higher than the rear of the Audi 80, with which it not only shared the technology, but which the sedan also very much resembled. Strange approach by Volkswagen, by the way, because you would think that the brand would market the car higher than the Passat due to the different name. Yet you could also get fairly light power sources in the four-door Passat, which distinguished the supreme Volkswagen from neither the Passat nor the Audi 80. Would have made it a Passat with kapsones with at least the 1.8-liter four-cylinder and of course the five-cylinder, but in addition to these engines there were also a 1.3 and a 1.6.
They didn’t understand much about marketing at the time. Not that it would have given the Santana better sales figures, but marketing could have provided more clarity and an exclusive touch. Although, then he would have come even closer to the Audi 80. Apparently they were also in Wolfsburg with the model in their stomach, because they ultimately decided to simply call the Santana Passat after the 1985 facelift. The Santana became what it always was, a Passat sedan. Except in China, where the practical four-door remained in production under the name Santana until 2012. About forty years ago I wasn’t the only one who saw something in this failed car!
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl