Rear brakes on my Passat.......

[Steve]

I recently had to rplace the rear pads on the '01 Passat. The front pads still have a good portion of material left, but the rear pads were gone. Apparently, VW has a device that concentrates most of the braking effort to the rear wheels, in order to minimise diving. I must say that I have noticed the lack of nose-dives under heavy braking, but never knew the reason for it. Does anyone know of another manufacturer that does this? Rear pads wear at a rate of two to one over the front......but at half the price I'm not complaining!

 

[steve99]

The old late 80's Renault Alliances and Encores used a similar braking system. The cars themselves were junk, but they stopped good.

 

[CraigFL]

[ QUOTE ]
The old late 80's Renault Alliances and Encores used a similar braking system. The cars themselves were junk, but they stopped good.

[/ QUOTE ]

So good that by now they've all stopped...

 

[aeronca65t]

I can't really answer your question, but I assume that your car has ABS. This system causes the brake bias to allow more clamping on the front brakes during hard stops. Normally, this would incur more front-brake wear.
Perhaps the system is biased to the rear for gentle stops? (but gentle stops create very little wear)
I'd guess that it's not that your rear brakes are wearing prematurely, but that your front brakes are lasting extra-long due to robust design. Passats have pretty good brake performance, and this is mostly a reflection of good front brakes in fwd sedans.
As for the Renault Alliance mentioned above: I autocrossed mine in the early 90's and worked on a friend's ex-Archer racing Alliance (a factory AMC racer). I'd say these cars are probably gone mostly due to a truly abysmal dealer network...the car themselves tended to be slow but fairly bulletproof. Interestingly, we always saw the brakes as the weak point (for racing anyway). Like most of these cars, mine was built in the old Rambler factory in Wisconsin.