A high-end luxury car from Volkswagen? Available at only 40 of VW's 258 retailers in what the company delicately refers to as "appropriate areas of the UK"? You don't need to be Britain's most raving Marxist to spot a slight political discrepancy here. Apparently tired of pitching for business among the proletariat, VW has taken a policy decision to head upmarket to where the big money is.

Thus the fabled people's car company is now catering for the kind of volks with 30 grand to lavish on a sports utility vehicle (the recently launched Touareg) and with more than twice that to put down on a fat and contentedly purring executive saloon - the all new Phaeton, available to you in a 6.0 litre V12 version for the knock-down asking price of just £68,260. Power to the boardroom.

If you don't fancy stumping up nearly 70 large (or if your company doesn't fancy you enough to stump it up for you), you can pick the 3.2 litre V6 version that I drove, which came in at slightly less than £50,000. Bargain! And even that had been bumped up from the basic price by the addition of several gimmicks of questionable necessity, including television reception (no fun if you can't use it while you're driving, which you can't; and even less fun if it can't get Sky, which it can't) and £400-worth of tyre pressure monitoring system.

Aimed at the more than averagely neurotic executive, this latter device produced a read-out on the car's computer, with a little line drawing of the Phaeton's chassis and the word OK beside each tyre. Kind of reassuring, I suppose - but expensively reassuring.

You can't say you're not getting quality for your money, though. The Phaeton's fittings have clearly been exactingly researched with your exclusive comfort in mind and in keeping with the car's name. Phaeton, as those who know their mythology will be aware, was the son of Helios and was the Greek god of air conditioning and heated windscreen washer jets.

Or was that his sister? Anyway, VW wants us to pronounce it Fay-ton, rather than Fy-ton or Fee-ton. And definitely not futon. You're not sleeping on some cranky wooden palette when you drive a Phaeton: you're sleeping on an infinitely thick and supremely well-sprung mattress complete with highly ornamental, fully automated headboard. It's a long and proud-looking car with muscular haunches and it weeps luxury from the moment you insert the key in the ignition and sections of the burr walnut wood-trim panelling on the dash scroll back to expose the air inlets - a pointless piece of show business, frankly, but rather magnificent none the less.

Turn the key and the starting of the engine is just faintly discernible somewhere under the shin-deep carpeting and the bomb-proof quantities of insulation. Under acceleration, similarly, the noise of the engine can only be made out if you press your ear hard against the dashboard - which is not, I should perhaps point out, a recommended driving manoeuvre, except on the straightest patches of motorway and even then not for too long.

The automatic gear shift slips from berth to berth with a gloriously prestigious softened click. The upholstery (sunny beige Vienna leather, natch) fashions itself subserviently to your form. The ride appears airborne. If you aren't already the chairman of a professional football club, you will soon imagine you are.

Even the air conditioning is no ordinary unit. Whether it's billowing or whispering around your delighted skin, you can rest easy in the knowledge that your Phaeton's aircon has been tested and proved to generate a steady interior temperature of 22 degrees while the car passes at 186mph through an outdoor heat of 50 degrees. Some of the mid-period Apollo rockets would have done well to match that. VW concedes gamely that "these are circumstances unlikely to be encountered by the majority of motorists", though, actually, on the M4 last Sunday, I think I came fairly close, and without burning up on re-entry.

The boot lid opens and closes automatically, either via a button on the plipper or by the mildly Star Trekian method of passing your finger over the chrome badge on the boot. The boot itself is almost dangerously deep and contains space enough not just for the executive golf clubs but also for a considerable portion of the green at the 18th. Rear passengers get the kind of leg-room which you normally only find by going and sitting in the middle of a park. Mine was a five-seater version, but clearly the canny executive, who wouldn't be looking to go mob-handed, would opt for the four-seater and enjoy the expanded shoulder space available around a pair of chairs which are adjustable in 10 directions.

One problem, though: the badge on the bonnet. Wouldn't today's executive expect his £43,000 to buy a car with an Audi badge on the front? Or a Mercedes badge, or a Lexus one? The VW Phaeton inescapably commits you to spending a lot of money and getting... a VW. Then again, class is permanent and the signals given off by badges are temporary. If we can agree to stop laughing at Skodas, then we can almost certainly come to accept the rich man's VW.

The lowdown

Name: VW Phaeton 3.2 V6
Price: £42,905
Top speed: 150mph
Acceleration: 0-62 in 9.2 seconds
Consumption: 23.2 mpg
At the wheel: Doug Ellis
On the stereo: TalkSport
En route for: Birmingham