This Volkswagen Phaeton VR6 Is Weird As Hell And Not Just Because It’s A Manual

The Volkswagen Phaeton is Volkswagen’s first and only luxury car. When it hit the market nearly 25 years ago, the company had never built or sold anything like it. It was a moonshot as much as anything, a realization of a dream for VW’s chairman, Ferdinand Piëch. Why couldn’t Volkswagen, which was having the time of its life around the turn of the millennium, make the best car they could, using the finest parts and engineering from all the various luxury brands it controlled?

The result wasn’t a rebadged Audi A8: it was closer to a Bentley, as the Continental GT and the Flying Spur shared the Phaeton’s platform, scaled up from the Audi. Piech wanted a car that could do 300 km/h (186 mph) all day and sell it under the Volkswagen badge, wearing a distinctly Volkswagen design of the era. The Phaeton also introduced some very interesting engines. Customers could choose from such dazzling powerplants as the six-liter W12 engine, a 450-horsepower, 48-valve all-alloy sculpture that packed within smaller dimensions than the 4.2-liter V8. Or for those who wanted to drive a very fancy diesel-engined car, the five-liter V10 TDI could be chosen. All of these engines were also available in the Volkswagen Touareg SUV, and all of them were also paired with automatic Tiptronic gearboxes. And then there was the entry-level powertrain, for those who wanted to spend less.

What A Savings

For context, no matter how you view the biggest and best German luxury cars, they have often also been available in very basic configuration, for customers who were successful enough to drive the largest available car, but thrifty enough to choose the smallest engine.

Take, for example, the Mercedes-Benz W126: ideally, it would be a 500 SEL or a 560 SEL, with plenty of power from a big V8. Yet, in Europe, it was available and often sold as the 260 SE, taking the same straight-six as in the W124- generation Mercedes-Benz 260 E, a completely fine car by itself, and fitting it in the big S-Class. It was largely the same engine as in the 300 SE, just less powerful, and it was also available with a manual gearshift and cloth seats, without air conditioning. A while ago, an ex-North Korean Embassy 260 SE came up for sale in Finland, and of course it was the most basic version imaginable. You could also get the W140 with a manual gearbox, paired with the 2.8-liter straight six and badged as the Mercedes-Benz 300 SE 2.8. Cloth seats really belong in one of those. Later on in the 2000s, an S250 CDI was offered with a four-cylinder turbodiesel.

BMW didn’t offer a gasoline straight-six smaller than three liters in the E32 7-Series, but by the time it was succeeded by the E38 7-Series, a 728i was offered as well as a 725 tds turbodiesel. Audi happily sold a front-wheel-drive, 2.8-liter A8 from 1997 on, after the model range had been launched with bigger engines.

Six Speed Phaeton

The Phaeton was no exception. For a brief period after its launch in 2002, it was available with a six-speed manual gearbox for European buyers who chose the 3.2-liter, 240-horsepower VR6 engine. Imagine hustling a two-ton Phaeton with a manual gearbox!

In fact, were you to specify a manual shifter for the car, you would also shave a little off the 0-62 mph time: the 3.2-liter Phaeton sprinted to 100km/h in 9.4 seconds with the Tiptronic gearbox, but the “6-Gang” did so in 8.9 seconds. The caveat? Front-wheel drive only. You couldn’t get a manual Phaeton with the 4Motion all-wheel-drive, meaning the dream combination didn’t exist, nor could you choose a bigger engine than the 3.2-liter VR6. Still, 240 horsepower meant it wasn’t woefully underpowered.

While the manual version was the cheapest available Phaeton, Tiptronic wasn’t a significantly costly option. Looking at the 2003 German price list, the manual car in five-seater configuration cost 56.200 Euros, and with just a 1.650 euro upgrade, you would be cruising in self-selecting comfort. Four-seaters with the more statesman-like, electrically adjustable rear seating were 10,000 Euros more expensive, but the price gap to the W12 engines was immense.

If you wanted 12 cylinders, the car easily cost 100,000 Euros. The German Auto Bild magazine noted in its manual Phaeton test that choosing the base V6 saved you enough money to buy a Mercedes-Benz E-Class (presumably E200).

“The Phaeton palace is – currently – automotive heaven on earth. Superbly crafted, garnished with the finest components, sensational, 18-way adjustable seats, and sophisticated showpieces. Even the way the wooden panels glide silently in front of the air vents to protect sensitive passengers from drafts – you could almost charge admission for that. Especially since the V6 3.2 is by no means lacking in features and doesn’t have to forgo anything truly essential. Thanks to air suspension and selectable damper settings, the Phaeton can be either a limousine or a sports car.

The Phaeton V6 draws its appeal from perfection in every detail and from the realization that a W12, which costs 37,300 euros more, doesn’t offer much more.”

It makes sense that Volkswagen soon introduced the 4.2-liter V8 as a cheaper option, but it still cost over 90,000 Euros. The V10 TDI was available from 82.600 Euros, but not every customer would have wanted a diesel.

Not A Sales Success

Then there’s the question of how many customers even wanted a Phaeton in the first place. Volkswagen had prepared the special factory, the Gläserne Manufaktur in Dresden, for an annual output of 20,000 cars. Instead, they built six thousand cars per year, and it took four years to pass 25,000 units. The car cost Volkswagen a lot, as research analysts have calculated the total bill at two billion Euros. That means nearly $40k per car, a huge portion of the VR6-engined cars’ MSRP if you look at it that way.

One billion Euros went to build the aforementioned Transparent Factory (above), which moved into building the electric Golf in 2017 when the Phaeton’s final facelift version had ceased production, and after that, the ID.3. No cars are currently produced there, as VW shuttered the factory to save costs in late 2025.

The Phaeton, built to celebrate the success of its manufacturer, could never shake the badge it was born to wear. Customers chose more prestigious brands, no matter the engineering that went into the Phaeton. If it unfairly wore the tag of being just a Big Passat, it’s especially galling that it was actually manufactured with a drivetrain that made it just that, despite its platform and Campagnolo trunk lid hinges.

Auto Bild noted the engine sounded good and suited the car fine, wondering whether the extra price for the W12 was actually worth it as the 3.2-liter engine wasn’t underpowered at all. Put short, they didn’t hate it, declaring it good value and only noting that the manual gearbox didn’t fit the picture.

“Acoustically refined and restrained when cruising effortlessly, it delivers a sporty undertone when accelerating. And what the V6 does with the 2.2 tons of luxury cargo is more than astonishing. 0-100 km/h in 8.9 seconds, top speed 245 km/h – wow, those are sports car figures.

But that’s hardly a reason to send the base Phaeton to customers with a six-speed manual transmission. While the gearbox is precise, it suits a luxury sedan like jogging shoes on a double-breasted suit.”

These days, manual Phaetons are exceedingly rare. Volkswagen only sold them for a couple of years, 2003-2004, likely phasing out the six-speed soon due to a low take rate within a slow-selling model line. They sometimes pop up on German and East European car sales sites, but often the listings are erroneous and clearly show the Tiptronic shifter instead. If VW only built a few thousand Phaetons per year in those years, manual cars must have been made in the hundreds at best.

You Can Still Find Them In Europe

Imagine, then, my complete satisfaction at seeing this cheap 2004 Phaeton advertised on Kleinanzeigen, the German used goods site that used to be run by eBay. While it’s done 200,000 miles and doesn’t currently have valid TÜV roadworthiness inspection, it costs just 2,800 Euros, a fine price for a running and driving Phaeton that surely just needs a few small items to pass inspection.

As all these ads usually say, “Motor Getriebe laufen gut” (Engine and gearbox work well), and the Getriebe in question is the six-speed manual, as seen in the ad pics. The interior is still sumptuous, it has the trick vents and fancy seats, and it rides on air like the more expensive Phaetons. Base Phaetons were fitted with very modest-looking 16-inch alloy wheels in a manhole-cover design, but for some reason you almost never see them on cars advertised for sale. Cloth seats seem interestingly uncommon, too, and even the manual car here has leather.

The photos also show that the car has been converted to LPG, which is relatively popular in Eastern Europe as it’s a cheaper fuel, and it does offset some of the running costs of a larger gasoline-engined car. However, running on LPG does reduce engine power and provides worse fuel economy. It burns cleaner than gasoline, but in some older engines it can introduce valve wear.

Somewhere in America, there’s a street named after my dad … I mean, somewhere in Germany, there’s surely a one-owner, base-spec, manual Phaeton with low miles, ordered new by somebody that was about to retire after selling their business, but being so careful with their money that the car would have no optional extras at all. Ideally, it would have accumulated very few kilometers in these past twenty years, just enough to keep everything nicely lubed.

Phaetons, with their complex electronics including twin batteries, do not like sitting, and the front end is so full of stuff in the bigger-engined cars that the repair procedure videos seem daunting. A VR6 doesn’t necessarily mean a free ride to Easy Town, even compared to maintaining the W12, but paired with a completely normal manual gearbox it almost seems as sensible as a B6 Passat, just likely to be less rusty. And unlike the B5 Passat and the Phaeton, you couldn’t get the B6 with a V6-manual combination, either.

(Photos: Kleinanzeigen except Volkswagen where noted)