after a long wait we're finally here with the 2019 Volkswagen Arteon and
Volkswagen tells us is this new vehicle will be the flagship not just for their
sedan lineup but for the brand as a whole and the other good news from
Volkswagen is I think that this car might have just enough luxury to punch
above its weight class as well when thinking out the arty on its really
important thing about what it really competes with and two cars immediately
came to mind after driving it and those gonna be the kia stinger in the Toyota
Avalon so those three cars are kind of similar in price with the stinger being
the most forty of the bunch and the Avalon be the most comfortable
the already on kind of splits the difference between the two and also
importantly I think it looks much better than both of those vehicles there's more
than a little bit of Audi in the Arteon styling and that's frankly that's a good
thing when you look at it from the side there's a lot of 8:7 a lot of a5
Sportback for this kind of coupe like profile flowing roofline towards the
back there and up front you this really big kind of clamshell hood lots of
sculpting down the sides of this car the Arteon it's a really good-looking car
especially for us at hand although Volkswagen will tell you that it's a
coupe this vehicle that I'm driving right now is the SEL premium r line
version of the arty on and it comes with a bit more sporty flourishes so you get
you know this kind of unique bumper up front that has more air inlets on the
side it makes it look more aggressive move to the back you get this very
subtle kind of black lip spoiler and you also get these very cool-looking 20-inch
black wheels so the RT on you know even though it's priced more like a non
luxury vehicle I think it actually competes with luxury vehicles on style
and it also competes on the interior as well the first thing that you notice
about the arch you know especially in higher trim levels like this one is the
quality of the mat erial so very good real leather not leatherette on each of
the seats and you also get real metal trim pieces on the dashboard real metal
trim gear down around the shifter and it just looks and feels more like a premium
car than kind of a basic car much like there's a lot of Audi in the exterior
styling of the arty on there's also a lot of adding on the interior this
screen and kind of setup down here definitely reminds me of past items that
I've been in similar to kind of like the a5 Sportback that's just instead of the
screen being mounts up high it's down here a little bit in the dash but you
know similar screen size this means eight inches the screen in that car 8.3
inches you also get this twelve point three inches
display here in the instrument panel as well so that's kind of taken from Audi
in the same way though it doesn't really have the same level of customized
ability when it's in the Volkswagen so for instance you can't put the satellite
image or the earth in here but you can expand the map size and it's still a
pretty useful way to set up the instrument panel and make it more
flexible the second thing that you'll notice about the Audion is it's got a
lot of interior space so this is the spiritual successor to the Volkswagen CC
as Volkswagen would call it and even though it's got a five inch longer
wheelbase it's only two inches longer overall and the added length to the
wheelbase really opens up the interior so most of that length is actually gone
to the backseat they've actually actually has 40 inches of rear legroom
and when you sit back there there's a lot of space between you in the front
you with a seat push pretty far back as I do when I drive this also has benefits
in the cargo area so behind the rear seats you have 27.2 cubic feet of cargo
space and that actually expands out to 55 cubic feet with the back seats fold
it down and that makes the arching on kind of more like a wagon it's got a lot
of space in there when you drop those seats and you can actually fit really
long as well as taller objects because instead of a trunk it has a lift back
when the ariane was announced we actually didn't know exactly which of
the power trains would make it into the US version of the car but now that it's
here we know that it's going to be the turbocharged two-liter four-cylinder
that volkswagen kind of uses up and down the line up now in the already on it
makes 268 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque and it comes mated to an
8-speed automatic transmission not the 7-speed dual-clutch unit that you get in
the GTI or the GL I actually think that the RT on would benefit from having that
dual clutch gearbox the a3 that's in here it isn't bad per se it's pretty
smooth it's smooth shifting but it doesn't shift as quickly and I think it
kind of bogs the engine down when you're accelerating from a stop so when you're
at a stop you hit the gas pedal there's a bit of delay before the turbos really
kick in and the car really gets moving forward once you do get it in the power
the engine provides plenty of power for this vehicle even though this is a
larger vehicle that truly remote does pretty good work it's just you know
keeping it in the power that's a bit of a challenge
one thing that Volkswagen didn't nail though with this car is a suspension so
an adaptive suspension is standard on all trims of the Arteon which is a
pretty cool feature to get at this price level another thing that I like about
the suspension is its level customizability so you
you can actually choose a custom drive mode that allows you to sort out things
like the steering or the throttle response to exactly how you like them
and for the suspension instead of just having a drop-down menu with a few
settings to choose from you actually get a slider so in the custom drive setting
you can actually move this slider up and down and mix it between comfort and
sport to get it just the way you like it I haven't seen that featuring a car
before and it gives it a level of customization that I haven't seen even
in performance cars the Arteon suspension is definitely dialed in for comfort
rather than for a kind of sporty driving dynamics and that does make it a very
good grand touring car is the kind of car that you'd want to drive for three
hours if you had to really get somewhere long but not quite as good in the
canyons that being said though the suspension does a very good job when
you're turning of mitigating body roll so toss it into a corner you can
actually feel the weight of the car shift but by the time you exit the
corner especially on those long kind of banking corners the dimensions figured
it out and you exit the car pretty flat and pretty well-balanced and for a car
like this that has all-wheel drive that means you can put a good amount of power
down on exit given that you're in the right gear I came away from the art and
impressed with how much it looks rides and feels like a premium or a luxury
automobile now Volkswagen kind of saying that this car is meant to compete with
premium vehicles so we're like the Buick Regal and the Acura TLX
and I can say comfortably right now that the Rd on is a vehicle that I would take
over both of those vehicles what walks like it doesn't mention though is that I
think that the Arteon compares very favorably to another car that Volkswagen
makes and that would be the Audi a5 Sportback so the Audi a5 Sportback
starts at $45,000 this Arteon and I'm sitting in right now is pretty much
fully loaded at $47,000 and at that price I kind of think that I prefer the
Arteon over the a5 Sportback now you can't get a few features on the a5
Sportback that you can't get on the Arteon you can get a little bit nicer
materials you can get a bit more technology however to get those things
you're really gonna have to spend on an a5 Sportback and at that mid $40,000
range I think that the Arteon offers you more features it offers you a much
larger more comfortable interior and the driving experience between the two isn't
that different if I was a bit more agile but the Arteon is more comfortable and
it has a very good adaptive damping system and I've come to like especially
on roads like these the 2019 Arteon goes on sale this month
so keep an eye out for the dealerships and for more information about the car
head over to cars.com