Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

Aren't most things a bit knackered at that price? Surely you're going to get a better Superb than a Passat as they're more expensive to start with.

Maybe a Mondeo estate?

I dunno, you can definitely get examples around 5k. Will be 8-10 years old, 100-150k on the clock - maybe less if you shop around.

I was looking at Skoda estates for a while around this price mark, although admittedly I arrived at the conclusion that if that was the road I was going to go down I'd probably spend a little bit more. And then I bought a 16 year old e46 for half that instead.