As much as I rip on the Passat for being a land yacht that has lost its ways, I would recommend it over the current Camry. I think I'm very biased now towards German products. However, I think very highly of the new Avalon and have ridden in a few Avalon taxis here in NYC and in Boston and it was a nice, comfortable, quality car. And I love the new GS and IS from Lexus.
Recently, my father was looking at CPOs under 20k and that didn't give us the best options out there. But given the budget, I showed him a plethora of CPO Accords, TSXs, Altimas, Mazda 6, Jettas, B6 Passats, Civics,and CCs. I did forewarn him that getting a German car could end up on either end of the reliability spectrum. He loves to tinker with things and is worried about the reliability of German cars but I think every option I showed him bored him to sleep. He inquired about the new GS but with a $55k price tag, he couldn't afford it.
He ended up buying a heavily discounted new CC one weekend and that was the end of that discussion. I just hope for everybody's sake it doesn't blow up in three years.
My GTI, for the most part, has been decent with reliability. I'm still waiting for the water pump or the turbo to fail but overall, I enjoy driving it each and every time I take it onto the road and that easily outweighs me worrying about reliability. Life is too short. And ultimately that's the bottom line: owner preference and priorities. If I was tied down to a Corolla day in and day out I think I'd just purposely crash it into a telephone pole just to get some excitement out of my day.