On April 3, the Passat broke the 30-million-model mark for production in the Volkswagen plant at Emden. VW claim that no other mid-range model globally has been sold more than the Passat . The 30,000,000th vehicle was a Passat GTE Variant with a plug-in hybrid drive finished in Pyrite Silver Metallic. Volkswagen launched production of the first Passat models in its Wolfsburg plant on May 14 1973
Thirty million Volkswagen is probably right with that claim. Most mid-size ranges have had name changes during their run, even if they are part of a single lineage (e.g. Ascona–Vectra–Insignia; Taunus–Sierra–Mondeo), and very few have been built on as many continents for as long. Even Toyota and Nissan cut short the lives of their mid-range cars, the Carina, Corona and Bluebird.