The Volkswagen Phaeton W12 Was a $120,000 VW Ultra-Luxury Sedan

You probably know Volkswagen for the Jetta or the Golf, both of which start under $20,000. But just 10 years ago, Volkswagen also made this, the Phaeton, a full-size luxury sedan designed to rival the Mercedes-Benz S-Class. This one also has a 12-cylinder engine, like a Lamborghini or a Ferrari, and the base price when this thing was new in 2004 was $95,000, or roughly $125,000 in today's money. That's right, $125,000 for a sedan made by Volkswagen, the same company that charges you extra for a power passenger seat in the Tiguan. So today, I've borrowed this Phaeton from a viewer near Allentown, Pennsylvania, and I'm going to take you on a tour. I'm going to show you all of the crazy quirks and unusual features of the famous Volkswagen Phaeton W12. Then I'm going to get it out on the road and find out what it's like to drive a Mercedes-Benz S-Class rival with a 12-cylinder engine and a Volkswagen badge on the front. And then I'm going to give it a Doug score. And for more of my thoughts on the Phaeton W12 experience, click the link below to go to autotrader.com slash oversteer, where I've also compiled a list of several other 12-cylinder cars that are selling for way less than their original asking price. That list is relevant because the Phaeton has fallen a long way since it was originally sold in the US from 2004 to 2006. Now, I told you the original asking price of this car was $95,000, or $125,000 in today's money. Well, the current average asking price for a used Phaeton on Autotrader is just $8,700, with the W12 model holding only a slight premium over the standard V8. I'm sure you can guess why. Because it's a Volkswagen luxury sedan. When the Phaeton came out in 2004, I remember it made no sense to anybody, and the 12-cylinder version made even less sense. A 12-cylinder, six-figure luxury sedan from a company that was making the Jetta? The new Beetle? The Phaeton came out right when the Toyota Highlander was starting to get popular. Maybe Volkswagen should have concentrated their efforts and their resources on making a crossover family SUV? But they didn't, and instead we have the Phaeton, and anybody who appreciates weird cars is surely thankful for that. Now, if you've been paying attention, you'll notice that I've referred to this engine as a 12-cylinder or a W12, but not a V12, which is how you call most 12-cylinder engines. That's because this isn't a V12. It is literally a W12, and Volkswagen created it by putting two V6 engines together to create a W12. Now, the standard V8 engine in this car was pretty powerful. It had 335 horsepower, but the W12 was a monster. It had 420 horsepower and 406 pound-feet of torque. But beyond the engine, I'm going to start on the inside. Now, remember, I told you this was a Mercedes-Benz S-Class competitor, but Volkswagen knew they'd be playing at a disadvantage with the Volkswagen brand name against an established rival like the S-Class, so this car is full of some of the most insane luxury features for a 2004 model you will ever see. So get ready to be more impressed by a Volkswagen than you've ever been. I will start with a window defogger. Now, in your car, you have a windshield defogger. Fine. Everybody does. In this car, there are defoggers for the front side windows. You can push a little button, and then there's a vent right below the windows that keeps them from fogging up. And the rear windows have them too. The owner of this car told me he has never been able to get the windows to fog up in seven years and 80,000 miles of ownership. And since we're on the subject of those rear windows, this car has a rear sunshade in the back window, and it has sunshades for both windows in the back doors. That much is normal in a luxury sedan. But Volkswagen, again, wanted to go above and beyond the S-Class, so there's even little tiny sunshades in the rear quarter windows. You can put on these sunshades and be fully shaded from whatever sun is coming through these little four-inch windows. That is attention to detail. And that's not the only crazy feature in the back seat. In fact, things are just beginning back here, starting with this. Now, this car has four-zone climate control. So there are zones for the driver and passenger, and then two more zones in the back seat, which means that I can have my air temperature back here in a completely different setting than everyone else in the car. Now, that's not that uncommon for a luxury car, but this car has more than that. For example, it has heated rear seats. That's also not that uncommon for a luxury car, but check this out. It has ventilated rear seats. That's really uncommon for a luxury car. And it gets even crazier. This car has massaging rear seats. You've heard of massaging seats in the front. This car has it in the back. The owner of this car told me he's been thinking about trying to replace it, and he's been going to luxury car dealers, saying, hey, what has massaging rear seats? And the salespeople look at him like he's crazy, even though this thing had it almost 15 years ago. Massage. And of course, the rear features aren't done yet. How about this? Each rear door has its own lock and unlock button. That's not that uncommon. You probably will find that in an S-Class. What you won't find, each rear door has its own ashtray. Yep, that's right. There's one for each rear passenger. Now, in the center, of course, there's a little armrest that you can put down, and then you can rest your arms on it. Again, something you'll find in most luxury sedans. What you won't find in most luxury sedans, there's not only a center armrest, but there's a center headrest. So when you have someone sitting in the middle seat, you can put up the headrest, and when you don't, you can put it away for better visibility. Again, amazing thinking. And this center armrest has cup holders. That, again, is pretty common. Less common, they're individual cup holders, so you don't have to stare at some ugly, empty cup holder. If you're sitting back here alone, you want to sip your drink. Oh, and speaking of the rear headrest, something truly amazing about this car that I've never seen in any other car, when you open the back door to climb in this car, the headrest automatically whirs into place where you will be most comfortable. If the car detects that you've opened the door and then closed it and no one has gotten in, the headrest goes automatically back down so the driver has more visibility. Of course, if the car detects that you have gotten in, then it keeps the headrest in place so that you can use it. That means the headrest is always out of the way when there's no rear passenger, and when there is a rear passenger, it's in the most comfortable possible position. It's amazing. And the other thing I love back here, when you go to open the little lid containing the cigarette lighter power socket, you push it and then it sort of glides open gently instead of just popping open because this is a luxury car. Up front, two items do that. One is obviously the glove box. Push the little glove box opener button and then it gently opens right up. The other is far more impressive. The panel below the steering column and the driver's footwell that contains the fuses, even that opens gently. But back to the glove box, you'll find something interesting in there. That's the little black zippered leather book that says Phaeton on the outside. That contains all of the navigation CDs for all of the regions of the United States back when that was still a thing. Now, interestingly, that leather book is unique to the Phaeton. It says Phaeton on it, and that's not all that surprising. But weirdly, the discs themselves are unique to the Phaeton. They're each labeled for the Phaeton only. I guess if you got a Passat, you didn't get the same navigation discs as someone in a Phaeton. I wonder what the Phaeton's discs have on them that the Passat's don't. Perhaps all the locations of five-star restaurants and banks. But that just scratches the surface of the gold mine of quirks and features that is the front seat of a Volkswagen Phaeton. Now, I will start with the child locks. Now, a lot of cars have child locks, and you can lock the back door separate from the regular locks so your kids don't randomly open them while you're driving, and the Phaeton has those. Now, most cars have just a little lever inside the door itself. You click it, and then the door is locked. Nicer cars have a button over on the driver's switch panel by the power windows that you can lock and unlock the child locks. This car has individual child locks, meaning that you can turn the child locks on on one side rear door and not the other side in case you have a child on one side and an adult on the other. I have never seen that before in any luxury car. Maybach, Rolls-Royce, never. It is truly, truly impressive. And then we move on to the climate vents. Oh, the climate vents. One of the craziest things about the Phaeton. Now, the entire Phaeton has a ton of wood all over the interior, and the climate vents, well, they're just disappeared when the car is off. They're wood too. The climate vents don't actually reveal themselves until you turn on the car and turn the climate control to some temperature where they are required. And then the wood panels over the climate vents were open, and they reveal the climate vents so they can blast whatever air is necessary. You will notice that the middle climate vent panel actually has a cutout for the clock. So the clock can always be displayed whether the climate vents are up or down. Now, the really crazy thing is when you have the climate control set to auto, sometimes those vents will remain closed. The car can get to your desired temperature by sending air out at the vents on your feet or by the windshield. But if you manually turn the climate control so that the air is coming out of the vents on the dashboard, or if you're sending a lot of air, if you've changed the auto temperature to a very different temperature, it needs to get there quickly. It will open up those vents, they will whir open, and then all the air will come out until they've reached the desired temperature, and then they will close again to give you that beautiful wood look you get when you don't want to see your climate control vents. That is a feature you will only find in the highest-end luxury cars, but the craziness with the climate vents doesn't stop there. In fact, it only gets crazier. Now, in your car, if you want to adjust how much air is flowing through each individual vent, you slide a little wheel. Usually there's an X or a little flowy diagram, and you slide the wheel depending on how much air you want to come through. In this car, it doesn't bother with some plebeian little slider. Instead, it has a switch, and there is an electronic display showing exactly how much air is coming out of each individual climate vent. You want more air? You push the switch to the right. You want less air? You push the switch to the left, and the little electronic display shows exactly how much air is flowing through each vent, and it gets crazier still because they have those switches and the electronic display in back, which means the rear seat passengers even use the switch and see the electronic display when they're adjusting their individual climate vents, which is something that will basically never happen, but it's there, and it's high quality, and it's amazing. Also interesting in the infotainment system climate controls, you have the ability to change the rear controls from the front seats without having to reach behind you and grab the rear controls. Instead, just adjust it through the infotainment system. You can change the temperature to whatever you want it to be, not the rear passengers. And speaking of the infotainment system, there are a couple of quirks there. For example, you can check out the tire pressure of all four tires or the spare. It's that little circle near the trunk of the car. There is a tire pressure monitor just for the spare tire, and when it's low, it lets you know that the spare is low on air. Also interesting in the infotainment system, if you go into settings, you can put the wipers in their service position, meaning if you need to adjust the wiper blades, just push this little button in the infotainment system. The wipers pop up on the windshield, and that makes it easier to access them, so you can change the wiper blades. But that's not the craziest mechanical servicing thing you can do from the infotainment system. Check this out. Go into service again, and you can open the mechanical opening for the headlight adjustment. In other words, press that, and you can more easily adjust the headlights or replace a bulb. You do that from your infotainment system. You can also do various other things from the infotainment system, like view trip data. And if you've ever wanted to see a Phaeton W12's fuel economy, well, here's this one. Mostly, though, the infotainment system is just this ancient system that you can barely even use if you've spent a lot of time around modern touchscreens. It isn't a touchscreen, and it's rather cumbersome, but it's there, and it has a surprisingly high amount of functionality. Moving on from the infotainment system, in fact, just underneath it, you will find in the Phaeton, right above the transmission lever, there are two little tiny storage trays. But actually, they're ashtrays. And if you combine them with the ashtrays in the back, you will quickly realize that the Phaeton has one ashtray for each seat. And then there are the cupholders, which are one of my favorite Phaeton items. Now, just like the climate vents, Volkswagen wanted there to be just wood everywhere. And so the cupholders are wood, and they're flush with the center console. So it just looks like one big wood panel until you actually need to use them. Then, push them down, and they become a cupholder. Again, individual. In other words, when the cupholder isn't in use, it's just sort of this unbroken plane of wood in the center console. And only when the cupholder is in use and pushed down does it break that plane and really reveal that there are cutouts for the cupholders. Now, interestingly, if the cupholder is in the down position, and you want to get that plane of wood back in sight, press a button, and then it pops the bottom of the cupholder back up so that it's flush with the center console. Of course, it's a button. It's not just some mechanical release, because this is the Phaeton. Next up, we've got to talk about the shifter, which is one of my favorite shifters in any modern car. I can't really put my finger on why I like it so much, but it's wide, and it's thick, and it makes a T, and it almost looks like an airplane thrust lever, you know? When you shift into gear, it feels like you're really making something happen, and I think it's really, really cool. It also is cool that it has a W12 badge on it, so you don't confuse this with a regular plebeian Phaeton. And I also like the fact that it has a nice little wood strip on it, continuing the wood theme that basically dominates this entire cabin. And speaking of that wood theme, it's worth noting that there is an unbroken line of wood right below the windshield in your line of sight, and directly below that line of wood is a giant speaker. A few other interesting quirks in the front seats of the Phaeton. Now, if you look at the little panel on the side of the seats, you can see that you can basically adjust virtually anything related to the seats, but my favorite thing on that little panel are these two little unlabeled arrows up and down. I had no idea what they adjusted, so I started playing with them, and I realized they adjust the seat belt. Now, a lot of cars have adjustable seat belts in case you're short or tall, and you need the seat belt to go higher or lower, but this one has power adjustable seat belts. Push those arrows up or down, and then the seat belt on the B-pillar rises or lowers depending on where you want it. I've never seen that before. It's awesome. It's also worth noting that the Phaeton's gauge cluster is basically borrowed straight from the Bentley Flying Spur. In fact, the Bentley Flying Spur and the Phaeton came out right around the same time, and they share the same six liter W12, although in the Bentley, it's twin turbocharged for 550 horsepower. It's not turbocharged in this car and only makes 420 horsepower. Otherwise, these cars share some similarities, but mostly that gauge cluster. It looks basically identical to the Flying Spur, and the coolest part was it's configurable. It actually has a full color display in between the tachometer and the speedometer, and you can change it using a couple of buttons on the steering wheel. Now, of course, this looks ancient by today's standards, but back in 2004, this was a huge deal. Nobody had configurable gauge clusters, let alone full color ones, and I remember this was a really, really big idea back then. Also interesting were the Phaeton's parking sensors. They don't beep and upset your pleasant experience. Instead, the front ones are at the base of the windshield, and they light up this little warning, green, yellow, red, depending on how close you are. That's not that crazy, but check this out. The back ones do the same. Watch this space right above the rear window as I back up and get closer to something. They light up so you can look in your mirror and see exactly how close you are to whatever's behind you. And then we move on to one of the craziest features in the Phaeton, one of the craziest features I've ever seen in any luxury car. I truly mean that, and that would be the visor mirrors. Now, in most cars, you drop the visor, you open the mirror, and you look at yourself. In the Phaeton, you drop the visor, you open the mirror, and you look at yourself, but if you want a closer look at yourself, slide that mirror over, and there is a magnified mirror so that you can see your imperfections up close. And it's not only on the driver's side, the passenger's side has it too. There are two different intensities of mirror in the Phaeton's sun visors. Now, of course, the Phaeton also has a power closing trunk. Push a button on the trunk, wait, and the trunk will just close and latch itself. That's not all that uncommon. The coolest feature of the trunk is hidden back here, and it's something I guarantee you didn't know about the Phaeton unless you owned one, or you're a Volkswagen tech, or you're one of the crazy people who engineered this car when it was new. That feature is this. The Volkswagen emblem back here is not just an emblem. In fact, it is a hidden button you can use to open the trunk. If you have the key in your pocket, it has a proximity sensor. It detects that the key is close by. Walk up, push the logo, and the trunk automatically opens right up. You'd never know that was a button unless you know. Take a closer look at the operation of this. Now, a couple of interesting things inside the Phaeton's trunk, the most interesting of which is that this car has two batteries. I'm serious. It has two car batteries. One is on that side of the trunk, and the other one is on this side of the trunk behind this little netting area. It has two batteries because this car just has so many electronics and crazy stuff in this giant engine that one basically powers the ignition, and the other powers all of the stuff inside this car. Now, trunk-mounted batteries are really difficult to get to. If you have a dead battery, you need to jump the car. So, unfortunately, there's a little jump point under the hood, under a little panel that says plus minus. You can jump the car from there without actually having to tear apart your trunk lining. The other interesting thing inside the trunk, that would be the Phaeton literature. If you've ever wanted to see what the owner's manual of a W12 Phaeton looked like, well, here it is in all of its glory. Now, you never know what you might find inside the Phaeton literature. For example, here is a description on page 40 of book three about how you can lock all your doors in an emergency by peeling back a little rubber thing on the driver's door to find a hidden keyhole. Who knew? But I went and checked, and yes, there it is. There's the hidden keyhole in the driver's door with the rubber cap still on it, ready to be peeled off so you can lock all the doors in an emergency. Now, although most of the Phaeton's quirks and features are on the inside or in the trunk, and the exterior styling of this car seems relatively simple, there are a few interesting items of note on the outside. For example, I love that this little piece of chrome trim running down the side of the car doesn't end on the doors. Volkswagen could have just stopped it on the doors and saved money, but instead they kept it going on to the front fender and the rear fender because it just looks a little better. They had to add this tiny little two-inch piece of aluminum trim to every Phaeton, front and rear, on both sides, but they did it just because they thought it looked better, and that's what you get when you buy a $100,000 luxury car. Other interesting Phaeton exterior quirks, how about the windows? They're double-paned. They're ultra thick in order to provide better sound insulation. The drawback? The owner tells me that his E-ZPass won't transmit through the windshield. He has to hold it out the sunroof or out the front window because the front windshield is so thick to keep the sound out of this car that it can't transmit to the toll booths. I also love the fact that Volkswagen doesn't bother with reflectors on the outside of the doors so that cars driving past don't let the doors open. Instead, they stick with actual lights to make it even more obvious the doors are open, and not only do they do that on the front doors, but they have those actual lights on the back doors, and that is impressive attention to detail. That is something most Phaeton owners will never notice, but with that said, there are a couple of drawbacks to the styling of this car. In fact, there's one in particular, and that was it was pretty bland. Most people confused it with the Passat. The owner of this car tells me nobody ever recognizes this thing on the road or at a gas station, and that was its biggest problem, trying to sell a $100,000 car with relatively anonymous Volkswagen look-alike styling. You'd never really know you were looking at anything more special than a Passat unless you saw on the back that it said Phaeton. And as these things go, you'd never even know that you were looking at the ultra-special W12 model unless you saw the tiny little W12 badges on the back. That's the only way you can tell this is a W12, and that Phaeton badge on the back is the only way you can tell that it's a Phaeton. Otherwise, to most people, to the untrained eye, it's just a Volkswagen. Probably costs $30,000, $40,000. But those people don't know about the hidden trunk button, or the window defogger buttons, or the hidden cup holders, or the vents that go up and down, or the little electronic items. Okay, so those are all the interesting quirks and the cool features of the famous Volkswagen Phaeton W12. Now it's time for maybe the most important quirk of all, driving around in a Volkswagen sedan that cost 38% more than a Porsche 911 back in 2004. All right, driving the Phaeton. Now, I gotta say, putting the car in gear is already just a wonderful experience. Shifting, putting in gear. The gear lever is just, it just feels like you really are having an effect in the world. Obviously, the seats are tremendously comfortable. There's an enormous amount of room here. There's like four inches between me and the sunroof, which is crazy because I'm 6'4", so I guess this car was designed for someone insanely large and tall. And the seat is very comfortable. Plush leather, it's not like that hard Japanese leather from the 90s. It's very nice, feels great. Obviously, the car is tremendously quiet. There's no, I haven't heard any engine noise yet, although I'm sure the engine is there. I saw it before. All right, so I'm going to give it some gas here. Wow. It's much quicker than it should be, given what this vehicle is and what its size is. It is decidedly not as quick as the Bentley. I've driven the Flying Spurs, many of them, and having the twin turbochargers, even though it's only 130 more horsepower, it has an effect. The Flying Spurs really feel like sports cars. This feels like a fast luxury sedan, and that is definitely a difference. A lot of people say, oh, the Phaeton's just a Bentley. Well, there are some differences, and that's certainly one of them. The handling is far from athletic, you can tell. The steering is not vague, but it is very light. The goal was luxury here. They weren't intending to make a sports car, and they knew that. There's body roll, and the steering is not incredibly precise. That's not really the goal of this car. The goal of this car is to sort of waft down the street, and it does that magically. This car doesn't feel tremendously far behind the really crazy luxury cars I've done. There's no more road noise or interior noise. The ride quality is not quite there. You don't quite feel like you're in as much of a cocoon, but honestly, it's not that far behind. Driving the Phaeton W12, this is like a childhood dream come true. I can now check off F40, Phaeton W12, Mercedes R63 AMG. Those are the three big ones. I like to hear when you push the accelerator, you don't hear the engine sound as if it's obtrusive or annoying, but you sort of hear it just building. Ultimately, one of the problems with this car, though, is by being 13, 15 years old, it doesn't have any of the modern tech. It has all these cool features that we all think are insane, like massaging seats and blah, blah, blah, but it doesn't have adaptive cruise, it doesn't have the 360 camera, all this stuff that you get in basically any modern luxury car. That's the one thing that would prevent you from making this experience similar to a modern Mercedes-Benz. The other problem, of course, would be the potential maintenance and repair bills this car could generate. Train tracks are always a good measure. Yeah, this car is just so composed at every level, and the sound is very dead. You do hear a little bit of noise from the engine, but for me, as an enthusiast, I kind of like that. The Bentleys and stuff keep even that little bit of noise out. It's not a sports car. The goal is not zero to 60 performance with this type of car. It's to get you where you need to go as quickly as you need to, but nothing excessive. And even on back roads and stuff, this isn't made for that, and that's what I'm on. I'm on these great country roads, and this car's not made for that. But I could imagine cross-country in this thing, just sitting back in this comfortable seat and just hanging out. And so that's the world-famous Volkswagen Phaeton W12. It's a ridiculous, absurd car, but it's a ridiculous, absurd car that every enthusiast has lusted after at one point or another, mostly to be turned away by pricey maintenance costs and potentially high repair bills. This car was sold in Europe all the way through 2016, but it only lasted in the United States for three model years, and frankly, it's easy to see why. Most luxury sedan shoppers want the status symbol of a luxury badge to go along with their luxury car. That's understandable. Nonetheless, I'm glad I had the opportunity to get up close with the famed Phaeton W12, and now it's time to give it a dug score. Starting with the weekend categories and styling, the Phaeton looked fine, but that was one of its biggest problems. Its design was nice, but it wasn't a standout, and it gets a 5 out of 10. Acceleration, the W12 does 0 to 60 in 5.8 seconds, and according to the dug score acceleration chart, that gives it a 4 out of 10. Handling is okay. Like I said, it's not designed to be a sports car, and it gets a 4 out of 10. Cool factor is a tough one. In certain audiences, this thing gets a 10. My friends and I send each other photos whenever we see one of these on the road, but to 99% of people, it's just a Volkswagen, so it can't score too highly, and it gets a 6 out of 10. Finally, there's importance, and I just can't pretend this car has some grand significance to the car world. It's more significant than a cheap economy car, but it's no exotic, and it gets just a 5 out of 10, bringing the total weekend score to just 24 out of 50, which frankly seems about right. As for the daily categories, starting with equipment, the Phaeton is loaded with cool stuff, but since I'm judging these cars by modern standards, it's low on all the tech we've come to appreciate, and the infotainment system looks way behind, so I can only give it a 6 out of 10. Comfort is highly impressive, falling only just short of the best luxury cars, and it gets an 8 out of 10. Quality is a mixed bag. The interior is very nice, and it's aged very well, but maintenance and repairs is the opposite. It's quite troublesome, and that means no matter how nice it is inside, this car can't break a 6 out of 10. As for practicality, the trunk is surprisingly small, with just 13.2 cubic feet of cargo space, which should earn it only a 4, but the backseat is so large and spacious, I'll bump that up to a 5 out of 10. Finally, there's value. This car may be a nightmare to own, but you can't deny it's an enormous amount of car for 10 grand, and it gets a 7 out of 10, bringing the total daily score to a relatively high 32 out of 50, a figure it deserves. Add it all up, and the total dug score is a respectable 56 out of 100. Not bad for a used Volkswagen you can buy for like 9,000 bucks on AutoTrader.