This 2004 VW Phaeton has a Bentley engine crammed under the hood. Why is it at CAR WIZARD's shop?

Funfact: In Europe this thing was aviable with a 5.0 V10 Diesel. Insane!

Daniel just said Welcome to the shop. We’re going to look at this VW Phaeton. Then he asked what all the stains on your pants were.

As a Phaeton owner, I can confirm these are amazing cars, but hideously expensive to maintain.

I'm fluent in spanish and I understood that he said. He said, "Welcome back to the Wizard's shop and today we're going to talk about this VW Phaeton." He also said how did you get those stains on your pants, and you answered him 100% correctly when you said idk I've been having fun I guess. Then he says, "that's unusual!" I provide Spanish language interpretation for customers all the time at the Toyota dealership where I work.

Que bonito oir Español en un video de Car Wizard, gracias Daniel!

Bank1 and Bank2 lean condition means that your bank accounts won't cover the repair.

We loved our 2004 W12 Phaeton and our 2006 V8 Phaeton, they were the best highway cars I've ever owned.

Trivia: The W12 engine is a modular engine, based upon the Volkswagen VR6 engine. Basically it is two VR6's siamesed together at the crankshaft at a 72 degree angle. This allows the W12 to be built on some of the same tooling as the VR6, saving costs. The VR6 itself is what is known as a "safety" engine. Another name is the "taco engine". It was designed around the engine bay of the MK3 VW Golf/Jetta. VW wanted to install a 6 cylinder engine in these cars, but the problem was that an inline 6 would be too long. VW puts the transverse engine on the passenger side and the transmission on the drivers side, and an L6 would not work with this, it would need a transmission mounted behind the engine, a major new [expensive] component useable on only a few designs. A 60 degree V6 would work with existing transmissions, but the problem with that is that in a frontal impact the engine would hit the firewall and thus push the dashboard toward passengers, resulting in injuries. Honda put the first V6 in an Accord by stretching the nose of the car 60 mm, but this would result in two different bodies and much higher costs. The VR6 solved the problem by taking a 60 degree V6 design and folding it like a taco down to only 15 degrees. It has the intake on the front bank and the exhaust on the rear bank, and one cylinder head for both banks. That means that the front cylinders have a short intake runner while the rear cylinders have longer runners. The opposite is true with the exhausts. Thus, the front bank of cylinders has a different cam profile from the rear bank, and timing and fuel injection curves are slightly different as well. Fascinating design, and they sound fantastic with a good exhaust!

The Phaeton was Ferdinand Piech's baby and he came up with all of the crazy standards this car had to meet. Not crazy as in stupid but crazy as in how hard the engineers had to work to meet them, to make the worlds most advanced car. I've always wanted to own one of the W12 models but reading about all of the problems and the cost of repairs have kept me on the sidelines. When these were new the VW dealers had to be certified to work on the Phaeton so you just couldn't go to any VW dealer for service. Cool to see you taking on the repairs to this car.

In the mid-2000’s, while on business in Dresden Germany, I took a tour of the “Glass Factory” as it was called where VW built the Phaeton. It was a state of the art factory. Buyers could order a new Phaeton and watch it being built or simply visit to take delivery. It was one of the nicest auto factories I had ever seen at the time. I think they build the Bentley’s there now.

The reason the Phaeton didn't sell well in the US is because American customers were used to cheap cars with VW badges and the Phaeton sticker just sent most into shock. I saw a V8 model in a used car lot locally for sale for months for $3k with no takers.

“Using the parts cannon instead of using the diagnostic Cannon”- Perfectly stated, all of our local mechanics just like to throw parts at the car, because, after all, the customer pays for it, not them. I’ve yet to see one local mechanic use a code scanner, or a smoke machine. One of our local mechanics told the lady that she needed a new head gasket. He was just guessing, because when she had another mechanic look at it, and pressure test it, the guy said, “hey, all you need is a new radiator cap.” That’s all it was, but again, when you have lazy mechanics who don’t want to diagnose the problem, you end up spending lots of money on unnecessary repairs. We no longer use the mechanics in our small town, we have to go to the big city next-door to get good repairs.

The intro was funny as hell😂😂😂keep up the great work you do for that car world Wizard

Shops with a diagnostic culture are the shops that you want to take your vehicle to. Very good work Omega Auto crew!

Awesome intro Car Wizard😂😂😂!!! Daniel was great no worries 😎

Daniel said “I’ve been stealing tools and parts from the shop for months and this gringo has no idea.”

The Phaeton is still sold in China (only), but now it's called Phideon. Is build over MLB platform (A4, Q5, A6, A7, A8, Macan) and have 2 engine option, the turbo 4 cylinders EA888 and supercharged V6 EA837

I didnt expect daniel knowing spanish lol, definitely would watch him working on cars in spanish, and dw wizard he didnt say anything offensive lol

I love car wizard’s wife describing things doug style. Its like- just the perfect amount of information lol

I least one for 39 months in 2004 what a wonderful car ,