From our Top 20 dumbest cars of all time list, I had found examples of nine during my dump travels (Ford Pinto, Pontiac Aztec, Cadillac Cimarron, Ford Mustang II, Imperial Chrysler from 1990, Smart ForTwo, Chevrolet Vega, Mercedes-Benz R-Class AND Chrysler PT Cruiser convertible) before now. Since it is Very unlikely that I will enjoy in a Fuller Dymaxion OR Horsey without horses in a Sheep pulletI knew I should keep my eyes peeled for number 8 on the list: the Volkswagen Phaeton. Just over 2,200 Phaetons were sold in the US, but I did found equally rare machines just by being persistent. Sure enough, I found this ’05 in a Northern California construction site recently, a few lines from a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow.
Since the name Volkswagen means The people car, one would think that the idea of a flashy luxury sedan bearing the emblems of such a proletarian brand would not make much sense in North America. After all, Toyota, Nissan and Honda understood that American vehicle buyers associated their brands with reasonable but affordable machinery (this is not the case in Japan) and created separately snootified brands sell their luxury wheels here.
Anyway, Ferdinand Piech decreed that there would be a large VW luxury sedan based on the same platform as the Bentley Continental GTstuffed with running gear borrowed from the Audi A8. This happened, and the Phaeton was the result. Phaetons were built from model years 2003 to 2016, but only 2004 to 2006 models were sold in the United States and Canada. This car is one of the 820 Phaethons sold in the United States for the 2005 model year.
A bewildering variety of engines, both petrol and diesel, were available in Phaetons sold elsewhere, but only two made it to North American VW dealers: a 4.2-litre V8 and a 6.0-litre W12. This car has the V8, which it was rated at 335 horsepower and 317 pound-feet (the W12 had 420 horsepower and 406 pound-feet).
You’ll be happy to know that this engine produced nearly 14 times more horsepower than the first Volkswagens imported into the United States (and this is Before factor into the swap of gross versus net valuations which happened here in the early 70s).
How much did all this luxury cost? MSRP on this car was $66,950, or approximately $105,967 in 2023 US dollars. Meanwhile, as cheap as possible Volkswagen Golf 2005 listed at $15,830…and the pinch-pin aura that hovers around every one of those budget VWs has migrated to every Phaeton (in the eyes of those who judge others by the elegance of their goods, at any rate). On purpose, the 1949 Beetle cost $16,098 in 2023 dollars, which was a good deal at the time, despite the frightening cable brakes.
That said, this thing was an engineering marvel. Check out these trunk hinges, which look like something out of an intergalactic space probe.
By all accounts, the US-market Phaetons were extremely comfortable and drove well. The problem for Volkswagen of America was that few car buyers with fat wallets wanted to pay for one instead of a Mercedes-Benz S-Class OR Lexus LS (Another problem was that American vehicle buyers had shunned sedans of all sizes for quite a few years by the mid-2000s). Thought I’d buy these clever cup holders for a boombox project for car partsbut they were held on by exquisitely German proprietary fasteners that held up to my crude traditional tools.
This car does not appear to have been wrecked, although the parts buyers dug out all of the valuable front lighting and trim components (probably for resale on eBay). My guess is that it ended up in the hands of a third or fourth owner who didn’t understand the costs of maintaining a high-end European luxury vehicle, and the first five-figure repair estimate doomed it.
How perfectly do you jump when you’ve jumped 1,000,000 times? Perfectly how you build a car after building 100,000,000 cars.
It was a good thing for the Volkswagen Group that the Phaeton sold well in China.
Indeed, a successor of Phaeton is available in the Middle Kingdom right now!
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