The third generation of Volkswagen Passat was officially introduced in 1988 when the German car manufacturer rolled out a refreshed version of the model.
Although the Europeans got the new Passat in 1988, the car arrived in North America in 1990 while the South American market received it in 1995. Even if it was based on the B3 platform, just like Volkswagen Corrado, the car shared a lot of parts with the A platform vehicles, most of them Golf models manufactured in the previous years. If its predecessor used different names around the world, the third generation was only marketed as Passat in all countries, including North America.