Volkswagen T-Roc - long-term review

T-Roc news: we’ve been absolutely bashing through the miles with the little VW, and doing some properly loaded journeys, too. This has required some thinking (family of five, dog and luggage), as well as some maintenance jobs.

Though ‘maintenance’ is probably a strong word, given as I tend to think of them as just things you should do. So: air up in the tyres for heavier consistent loads, a quick top-up of oil - the ‘Roc has used about 2/3rds of a litre in 10k miles - and the removal of the stepped boot floor thing to give better space for actual stuff. Ok, so you have to look at the spare briefly, but who cares? Admittedly, if you really were buying a VW product for five and four-paws, you’d probably be better off with a Tiguan or Touareg, but the T-Roc coped brilliantly.

Another interesting thing about the little VW 1.5-litre four pots with lots of techo-trickery and cylinder deactivation: if you drive them like a sedated great-grandmother, you can manage upwards of 50mpg (I've scored a best of 54.8mpg so far). An uninteresting fact about the same engine, for balance, is that is has very little character. Effect, yes. Idiosyncratic charm... not so much. Practicality over personality here, then.