I personally can't stand them, however, I've heard the older ones like your year are much better and easier. The ones I work on (98+) require you to take the front of the car off to do a timing belt, just like an Audi. Hopefully yours isn't like that. Stupid design on their part. Same thing to do a radiator.
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you must be thinking of the 04+ passat... on the others its just the motor mount, the pluming for the turbo, the coolant resevoir, the p/s resevoir, and the covers and pass side tire takes an hour to do on the hoist.
on the passats they have the engine mouted the wrong way like an intrepid. and its pretty close to the rad, ive never done 1 but it looks bad.