We've had our Graphite Blue version for about a month now and love it. Beautiful around town, and a treat on the Whistler Highway. Hits 200kmph easily. Very stable handling on the high speed curves and smooth a silk on the really rough pavement where they're doing all the blasting. We've got the basic model without even the convenience package (much to the chagrin of the dealer who we haggled down $2,000 on the price, all the while he was thinking he'd make it back with the convenience package!!). It looks much better with the black window trim anyways! We've added our Yakima Rocket Box and mountainbike rack and it holds all our gear plus 2 teenagers and their travel goodies no problem. I also mounted the splash guards which I don't think should be an option on a car in Canada! I don't have the issues with the lack of the leather steering wheel, but we're moving up from a 94 Golf CL so this is luxury!! We compared it to the Subaru Legacy wagon which was a bit cheaper ($27,000 in Vancouver) but smaller, and rode like a rickety bucket and had a very gutless engine (they claim 175 HP but it felt gutless compared to the Passat). The jump to a Volvo is not worth the price IMHO. The V50 is tiny inside and the V70 is too much money.
All in all, we're happy with the purchase. I'll get some snow tires for the 16" rims the car came with and some aftermarket 17" alloys and summer tires when the current set wear out.
