That would have been a much later model of Passat, with altogether better structure, like all modern cars. The fairly worthless NCAP did not exist when the plastic tank was introduced.
I say that NCAP is fairly useless because they only do one crash test and it is well established that even under laboratory conditions you never get the same crumpling each time. I was doing some work for TRRL at the time, and found out quite a lot of interesting stuff, like Volvo having one of the worst steering wheels in the business at that time while the best was the MG Metro. (Might have been the ONLY safe feature of the Metro!) The Type Approval test at that time required passing one frontal impact test, so Honda tested the early Civics about 160 times and got one that scraped a pass, which was all that was required. That was because no two impacts were the same, as I said. So I never would buy an early Civic.
The sad thing was that they were also crashing lots of moderately old Minis for an experiment. I don't know how many they wiped out, but it might have been about 100. The Mini was selected only because they could get large numbers of used ones cheaper than any other car at that time, around 1986 I think.
