The Auto1 Trophy weighing 5 kg was presented to Dr. Wolfgang Bernhard, Chairman of the Volkswagen brand Board of Management, and Dr. Bernd Pischetsrieder, Chairman of the Board of Management of Volkswagen AG, on Wednesday 1st March 2006 – at a ceremony parallel to the Geneva Auto Salon. “The Auto1 Award is the crowing point of a series of successes“, said Dr. Bernhard, thanking the readers and jury. He drew attention to the diversity of prizes won in recent times by the Passat, saying that this proof of the car’s “outstanding concept”. He continued by stressing that: “Fame and honours are a very good basis, but satisfied customers and sustained commercial success are the criteria by which we want to be judged”.

As far back as 1997 saw the Passat in its fifth generation win the Auto1 Award. Since its market launch in Europe in March 2005 (wagon: August 2005) the new Passat has established itself at the head of the middle-class saloon field and lost no time in continuing its predecessor’s winning ways, for example collecting the “Gelber Engel” consumer prize awarded by Germany’s ADAC automobile club and the “Goldene Lenkrad” presented by Bild am Sonntag, the German Sunday newspaper. The Passat has also been voted “Car of the Year” in several other European countries.

The statistics on new registrations compiled by the KBA (German Federal Bureau of Motor Vehicles and Drivers) for January 2006 show too that the car is number one in its segment, with no less than 10,264 newly registered Passats and a market share in Germany of 26.1 percent. The figures for 2005 as a whole were 98,136 new registrations and a market share of 17.3 percent.