GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: New Volkswagen Arteon flagship

The second generation of Volkswagen’s extroverted high prince of style has become the Arteon.

Too cool for the Passat CC name, the five-seat Arteon sedan -- or hatchback, as it should be more correctly described -- has grown in every significant dimension, smoothing out the more boring bits of the Passat sedan and wagon and adding in an extra layer of practicality over the old CC.

It’s also moved a little more upstream, with Volkswagen pitching it at a more sophisticated customer than the Passat, even though they are essentially the same car beneath the Arteon’s more aggressive body styling.

Still sitting on an elongated version of the German car-maker's ubiquitous MQB modular front-drive architecture, the Arteon is planned to stick with a pure four-cylinder range of engines, including even the new 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine which debuted in the Golf Mk7.5 last month.

At 4862mm long, the Arteon will be 95mm longer than the standard Passat sedan but only 64mm longer than the superseded Passat CC.

It should also pay dividends in interior space for its passengers, especially in rear-seat legroom, with a 50mm stretch in the mainstream sedan’s wheelbase to 2841mm.

The Arteon will bring an even bigger improvement in rear-seat space over the Passat CC, with the wheelbase jumping 131mm from 2710mm to 2841mm.

It’s also significantly wider than the Passat, at 1832mm (+39mm), though its roofline is 29mm lower, at 1427mm.

The new car, built in Germany and on sale in Europe from June, has addressed plenty of the concerns of Passat CC owners, including the larger rear-window glass area for improved visibility, but there’s no confirmation of the rear-seat headroom.

While it has less luggage capacity than the Passat, its boot is still a fairly capacious 563 litres (the Passat’s is 650 litres), and it can boost that to 1557 litres with the seats folded down. That’s a jump of 31 litres of standard boot space over the CC, and an enormous 577-litre improvement with the seats down.

The car’s base engine, the 1.5-litre TSI, will deliver 110kW of power, then the Arteon family moves through two variants of the same 2.0-litre TSI petrol family. The first of these (and the middle of the petrol-engined range) delivers 140kW of power and the flagship has 206kW of power.

There’s a six-speed manual option for the base engine, though it can be ordered with a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, which is standard on the 2.0-litre TSI motors, while the flagship also scores all-wheel drive.

The diesel family is essentially three variants of the same 2.0-litre TDI motor, starting at 110kW (six-speed manual or seven-speed DSG), 140kW (ditto) or the DSG-only 176kW range-topper, which is also all-wheel drive.

Volkswagen hasn’t released consumption data on the Arteon’s volume models yet, though the flagship petrol motor claims an NEDC figure of 7.3L/100km (and CO2 emissions of 164g/km) and the diesel consumes 5.9L/100km and emits 152g/km.