The Passat is gone, unceremoniously dumped in favor of a 25-year-old Mercedes-Benz 300SE.
I don’t miss it; my wife misses the lack of things wrong with it. There were things wrong with it, to be sure, but none of the shockingly weird things that go bad on an old Benz.
But it’s gone, irretrievably. I guess I’m stuck with my magnificent old Mercedes.