The Volkswagen CC: Five for Fighting?
It may surprise you '” or not '” to find out I've been spending a lot of time recently thinking about seating configurations.
You see, I've got a family of five and a choice of two vehicles in which to transport it: a minivan and a full-size sedan. And although I'm sometimes tempted to cram us all into in my old-school Ford Taurus, there's this little voice in my head that always warns me off. It sounds something like this: "Daddy, she's on my side of the seat!"
In other words, when I say I've got a close family, I don't mean spatially; that's why, even when it's just me driving my two youngest a few blocks to school, each of us has a row entirely to ourselves.
Does that help explain my fascination with vehicles like the Mazda MAZDA5, Kia Rondo and 2011 Chevrolet Orlando, all of which offer three rows of seating in some relatively efficient packaging? To quote the esteemed American thinker Bugs Bunny, "Could be, rabbit, could be."
Which brings me to some recent news out of Europe. The Volkswagen CC has been an unqualified hit here in the U.S., with growing sales and the sort of lean, aggressive look that's missing from both the Volkswagen Jetta and the Volkswagen Passat. In fact, to show just how aggressive and sporty (and luxurious) the CC is, its cabin only seats four. There are two sort-of-individual rear seats, each with its own side bolstering no less, separated by a handy-dandy storage space.
The CC, known as the Passat CC on the other side of the ocean, has been successful in Europe, too, except for one thing. According to VW, European buyers have been absolutely clamoring for the automaker to add three-across rear seating in the Passat CC. Volkswagen has now announced it will oblige these buyers, albeit with a middle passenger "seat" that looks like it would fit about a third of an average American's rear end.
There's no word about whether this option will reach the U.S., but here's a word about whether it should: "No."
Now, I'm not going to go all psychodynamics here, but it should be obvious to any observer of America that we've got a thing about personal space; namely, we like lots of it. Unfortunately, that also happens to be something missing from the middle back seat of even today's biggest sedans, and don't let automaker specs fool you.
The CC, for example, claims to offer 56 inches of shoulder room for its two front-seat occupants and 54.7 for those in the rear. The specifications on the new-school Ford Taurus show front-seat shoulder room at 57.9 inches and the rear-seat number at 56.9 inches. When you see figures like that, you might be excused for thinking that, since most people are less than 4.5 feet wide at the shoulders, there'd be plenty of room for occupants both front and back.
Only that's not what's going on here. The exterior width of the CC is 73 inches; the Taurus is significantly wider, going 85.7 inches from side to side at the mirrors. But if each occupant in the second row of a CC took up his/her full allotment of shoulder room, the vehicle would have to be some 109 inches wide; looking at the Taurus the same way, the vehicle would have to be more than 170 inches wide.
I'm not just picking on Ford or VW for this either; all OEMs use the same kind of misleading measuring conventions. I'm just saying that no matter how you spin things, three people are going to be less comfortable than two when they have to fit in the same space '” or, as is usually the case, a smaller one.
Add in that U.S. aversion to being too close to others, and I predict two-across rear seating will be a growing trend in the industry, with anyone who needs to routinely travel with more than four passengers having to add another row. And I mean at both ends of the spectrum, too,
Recall, for example, the Lincoln MKT. The Blue Oval's new luxury liner offers a pretty incredible range of creature comforts, new in-car communications technologies and advanced powertrains. But what it doesn't offer is three-across seating; instead, the big Lincoln goes with a 2+2+2 layout, which is part and parcel of that focus on comfort.
Then there's all that "four-door coupe" stuff that's been propagating through the luxury segments for a while now. What was originally meant to reflect on a vehicle's exterior silhouette has evolved to the point where coupe-like seating for rear-seat passengers has become de rigueur: Witness vehicles like the Porsche Panamera, and Mercedes-Benz CLS-Class.
Styling cues aside, premium luxury automakers also have been increasingly using 2+2 seating in sedans as a way of providing more real estate to their occupants. It's a response to the same personal preferences that equate acreage to prestige in terms of "real" real estate. So there will be no fighting about who has to sit on the transmission hump in a Bentley Mulsanne or a Maybach Zeppelin, thank you very much.
I'm just hoping it won't take a six-figure luxobarge to have the same effect on my kids.