It has been quite some time since we’ve piloted a Touareg, Volkswagen’s top offering both on price and power nowadays. And I certainly don’t recall the premium SUV exhibiting quite so much pomp and circumstance as it now does. Mind you, having a PHEV that runs as an EV for 53km will do that to refinement and cabin isolation. And having 700Nm to draw upon never hurts with forward thrust either, the motor and turbopetrol engine combining to shunt the 2.2 tonne all-wheel drive five seater to 100 in near enough to five seconds flat.
Course you do pay some for the privilege, just under $160k for the 340kW range topper but you can also check into the Touareg experience for just over $110k. That’s for the V6 model which runs a 170kW/500Nm turbodiesel mated to an eight-speed automatic. It’s not quite as quick in a straight line – figure on around 6.5sec – but all variants have a braked towing capacity of 3.5 tonnes, so boaties and those with caravans should feel well serviced with their units hitched to this.
The facelift comes five years after the launch of the third-generation Touareg, and while many of the updates are related to software there’s plenty of new hardware as well. On the outside, you’ll notice new grilles, along with matrix headlights across the range, and at the rear an illuminated VW badge, along with a full width taillight. Inside the 12.5-inch instrumentation cluster and 15-inch infotainment system are new, the latter angled towards the driver. There’s a separate panel for HVAC gubbins and everything is sensibly laid out. Haptics are still present but aren’t too fiddly in use.
Kicking things off is the V6 with a 170kW/500Nm 3.0 V6 TDI. This $111,990 model comes with matrix headlights, seat heaters, 20-inch alloys and wireless Apple Car Play. There’s no traffic sign recognition but this appears on the $141,900 V6 S R-Line, along with 21-inch alloys, and a more potent V6 3.0L TDI engine, pumping out 210kW and 600Nm of torque. This model alone features four-wheel steering, a boon for parking and cornering. It also has air suspension and adaptive dampers, as does the R model. Both TDI units are said to consume fuel at a rate of 7.9L/100km whereas the PHEV R model has a figure of 1.9L/100km (44g/km).
Additional R-Line items include ambient lighting and seat ventilation to go with the seat heating. The Touareg R in its hero blue colour VW New Zealand expects to be the best seller initially. Likely as not the R line will thereafter be the most popular as it was last year when it accounted for two-thirds of the 282 local sales. Mention of which, Touareg has sold over 1.1million units since its debut in 2002.
At the top of the range the R adds 22-inch alloys, illuminated door stills, special stitching, premium sounds by Danish hi-fi maker, Dynaudio, four-zone air, an electric steering column and leather upholstery. The front seats also have a massage function. The R model eases away in electric mode and its 100kW motor can propel it to 140km/h before the engine chimes in. The petrol unit is good for 250kW and 450Nm. Overall weight is 2435kg and length is just under 5m, width near to 2m. Luggage capacity is said to be 655L, down from 810 for the R-Line and V6 on account of the 17.9 lithium-ion battery pack beneath the boot floor. It takes roughly two hours to charge using a 7.2kW wall charger.
Colours for the range number seven, but only white has no additional cost, the rest adding $500 to the bottom line except for a pearlescent white which costs an extra $2500. Count on pretty much every safety feature on all models, only the PHEV adds Park Assist and an area view camera. A Euro NCAP safety rating is carryover from the 2018 five-star effort. Locally, the VW is covered by a five-year 150,000km mechanical warranty.
Our initial outing was in the R model on the motorway, so it was churchmouse quiet in EV mode. The new interior with the bigger screens (Innovision cockpit) is a real step up visually. We gave it a brief prod of the loud pedal and it surged away effortlessly, certainly with a bit more gusto than the R-Line but then you’d expect that with the additional output from the electric motor. The R-Line still has plenty of shove and it corners in rather effortless fashion with all wheels steering. We can understand why this will likely be the biggest seller long term.
There was no time in the base V6 model but we had a shot in the ID.5 coming back home. The fully electric unit seemed to use up battery range gradually – it’s good for over 500km – and felt almost as refined as the Touareg. It too can get along and of the VWs I drove on the day, this was the one I’d want to drive home in, especially at its price, around half that of the Touareg R. Not quite as good off road of course, nor with the pulling power. But a bit better for townies, arguably.
And on electrics, expect the ID3, a facelift version, to debut here in Q4. On the ICE power front, there’s also the new Tiguan coming and the facelifted Golf Gen 8.5.
