The original Passat, styled by Giorgetto Giugiaro at Italdesign and built on mechanicals developed with the Audi 80: front-wheel drive with the engine mounted longitudinally, unusual for a Volkswagen of the period.[1] North America received the same car as the Dasher, with its own engine lineup and a facelift schedule that briefly ran ahead of the European car’s.
Wikipedia’s article for this generation runs an unusually complete engine table, giving power, torque and top speed in km/h directly for nine engine variants; nothing here needed to be converted from an imperial figure, a rarer situation than usual for a 1970s car.