2012 Volkswagen Touareg road test

Hollywood has a simple formula; badass characters drive badass cars. As you’d expect, tougher the said character, the meaner his ride. Take Vin Diesel and his flame throwing GTO from Fast and Furious or Clint Eastwood’s prized Gran Torino that some unfortunate kid was stupid enough to try and steal. However no car ever captured my imagination like the jacked up, matt black VW Touareg from the movie Repo Men. The fact that these guys hacked artificial organs right out of their human hosts if they couldn’t pay their instalments on time made them the type of people you don’t want to cross. And that wicked Touareg turned their tough guy quotient up to eleven. To this day every time I see a first gen Touareg I feel a slight tingle in my kidneys.
 

Design and Engineering

Which brings me to my biggest gripe with the new Touareg; it doesn’t quite make me go, ‘whoa’ when I see one in my rear view mirror. Sure the earlier car didn’t look half as hazardous but it was still one of the most imposing SUVs on the road. The new one though has traded a lot of the visceral aggression for a cleaner more mature look but not sure if that’s what buyers in this segment would approve of. VW’s new design philosophy is all over the car, centred around the slim twin slat chrome grille and the Passat-ish headlamps. Besides being fully automatic these units use Dynamic Light Assist that monitors oncoming traffic and automatically adjusts the individual units to reduce glare. Very cool stuff. The hood is a clean design with two lines that start from the headlight and run neatly over the flared wheel arches.
The side profile has a bulge that runs along the length of the car at the height of the door handles. The clever use of a chrome strip along the base of the doors lends the side a classy, almost Porsche Cayenne profile. The rear is characterised by those flared wheel arches and wide haunches that accommodate Passat-like (again) tail lamps. Twin tail pipes, a subtle roof spoiler and a strip of chrome along the base of the boot lid lend it an air of classiness and again hark back to the Cayenne. All these Porsche similarities are understandable given the fact that the Cayenne, Touareg and Q7 are all built on VW’s PL71 platform.

The Touareg has grown insignificantly larger; it’s now 41mm longer and 12mm wider but 15mm lower. However Volkswagen has concealed the bulk very well and it never feels as large or cumbersome as, say the Q7. Most impressive though is the 200 odd kilo drop in kerb weight depending on the variant. That’s about a ten per cent decrease while torsional rigidity has gone up by five per cent.   
Step inside and you enter a wonderful world of soft beige leather and classy chrome and wood finish around the cabin. Sink into the very comfy and supportive driver’s seat and the first thing you’ll notice is the very Audi-like instrument console. The centre console itself is a simple uncluttered affair that’s dominated by a 6.5-inch touch screen that primarily handles the audio system, GPS navigation isn’t on offer.
However the dumb-bell shaped array of buttons that sits just fore of the cup holders deserve special mention. These buttons control the air suspension, damper settings and various driving modes for on and off road driving. But more on that later. There’s plenty of space at the rear thanks to a 41mm increase in the wheelbase to 2893mm and the rear seats themselves recline to make for a very comfortable cabin. There’s plenty of luggage space on offer; up to 1642-litres of space with the seats folded, which can be done by a touch of a button. However there are a few sore points; the wood finish steering looks great but doesn’t offer enough grip over long drives. The gear lever has simply been lifted from the cheaper Passat/Jetta. The cabin itself despite being well put together with premium materials is very VW, and just doesn’t exude the same class as an Audi. The big issue though is the lack of a third row of seats.