i live in maine and recently with the cold weather my 96 vr6 passat wagon will not start unless my foot is on the gas and i have to keep it on the gas or else it won't stay running after a long warm up it will stay running but very low and rough idle. Any ideas?

Hello, I'm guessing this has already been fixed because this post originated in Feb of this year but.. in case someone else experiences this here are some things to try:
Rough idle and sputtering or erratic engine behavior when it was otherwise running fine the day before is most likey caused by a bad signal from a sensor and also is often cause by poor grounds believe it or not. Disconnect your battery terminals and clean them well. Leave the battery disconnected for several hours. Also look at the ground terminals around the battery (look for where the brown wires terminate) and clean those grounds too and coat them with a good anti corrosion spray. Reconnect your battery terminals and start the vehicle. If the idle/engine runs fine then it still could be a bad sensor as you basically have now reset the ECU. If it still runs rough then unplug the Mass Airflow Sensor and see if it smooths out. If it does then you likely have a bad MAF but not necessarily because there could be other factors with other sensors or wires contributing. Remember, these engines run smooth with lots of inputs into the ECU and lots of adjustments happening in real time to compensate. VW's are very sensitive to all sensors but is also why my 96 Passat VR6 with over 146,000 still gets over 24 MPG. Hope this helps someone