2018 Volkswagen Passat.

About this file

This is the 2018 Volkswagen Passat shelf of the registry: 254 records of one model year, cut from the 765 Volkswagen Passat records the archive holds in total. One model year is the unit these cars are actually compared in — the same body, the same engines, the same wear — so reading them together is reading a cohort rather than a marque. Each record is kept exactly as it was filed: the photographs where photographs were taken, the odometer reading, the fuel and displacement, the damage class the listing itself stated, and — on 124 of these cars — a VIN that can be read, decoded and checked against the car's paper trail.

A record with no damage stamp is a record whose listing stated no damage class — not proof of a clean car — and we hold no price data to put beside it. The top of this shelf keeps moving: live 2018 Volkswagen Passat lots surface here while the hammer is still up — one is on the block right now — and move into the permanent record when it falls.