Volkswagen Touareg - long-term review

Our resident VW keepers Adam Waddell and Tom Ford have decided to engage in a friendly argument about their Touareg and T-Roc...

TF: Up to October 2019, 40 per cent of all cars sold in Europe were SUVs of one sort or another. That’s 484,400 vehicles that are probably a bit taller/ bulkier than they need to be. The sales figures indicate that people really like ’em. And one in 10 of those SUVs sold was a VW.

AW: Yes – funny how SUVs are the norm these days and you don’t find folk talking disparagingly about ‘Chelsea Tractors’ so much any more. Unless you’ve got a Range Rover Sport SVR. The thing is, with traffic and speed controls being what they are, I think the handling benefit that comes with a low centre of gravity is overrated, and it’s nice to survey the world around you from a little higher up.

TF: Not living in town, I’m not bothered by traffic calming, but do have to deal with a lot of rough lanes, and sitting up a bit higher does have advantages. Plus, I’m not sure the T-Roc suffers much in the handling stakes for everyday driving. We’re coming from different ends of the scale, mind. In the brand walk-up of ‘T’-cars, there’s T-Cross, T-Roc (like mine), Tiguan, and then your full-on SUV Touareg at the top. That’s if you ignore the Touran MPV (which you probably should). But I just wanted to see what you thought – because the more I drive the T-Roc, the more I wonder about VW’s strategy.

AW: In the sense that they’re all just scaled versions of each other? Yes, they should just be called Small, Medium and Large.

TF: My overriding feeling is that the T-Roc is lovely, but a bit… vanilla. It’s good at lots of the things I need to do. It looks expensive enough – I even like the radioactive child vomit Turmeric Yellow paint. The interior is well made, thought out and a touch funky with the body colour slab inside, and the driving experience is competent. It’s all good. Excellent, even. But it’s a bit middling for me – I don’t look back longingly after parking. Saying that, my partner – who is significantly shorter than me – loves driving it. Loves the fact that it’s not much bigger than a Golf but offers a better view, loves the way a VW feels. She even thinks the handling is ‘very sporty’. Is this a car for the people that know what they like in a car, but aren’t really those heavily into cars?

AW: You’re not wrong. T-Roc, Tiguan and Touareg aren’t statement cars – and that suits me. Sorry to go on about the Range Rover Sport SVR, but when one of those blasts past in a lairy spec and growling 560bhp 5.0-litre V8, it’s hard to think of a car less in touch with the real world. So, no, I don’t take one last look at my Touareg from the window at night but I’d rather be seen in this than the Lamborghini Urus with which it shares a platform. And the tech has improved so much since the last gen.

TF: So you’re saying go understated on the outside and keep the showing off for the people on the inside? That VW has played it the right way?

AW: Well, it works for me.