Volkswagen's new Touareg (From Living Northeast)

Volkswagen's new Touareg

5:43pm Friday 3rd September 2010 in

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THE FIRST VW Touareg was a thinly disguised version of the Porsche Cayenne. Launched in 2003, at the height of the public’s love affair with big 4x4s, it sold very well.

But things had to change. The recession, global warming, fuel prices and congestion charging schemes have hit sales of full fat 4x4s very hard indeed.

Volkswagen and Porsche are still partners in grime but VW put the Touareg on a diet - trimming more than ten percent from its weight - whilst also making it roomier, more economical and better equipped than its immediate predecessor.

The crash weight loss program is all the more impressive when you realise that the Touareg is 40mm longer than before (almost all of which has gone into extra rear leg room) and the chassis is five per cent stiffer.

your ideal partner in slime

Nigel Burton, Motoring Editor

This stiffness has given VW’s boffins the opportunity to redesign the suspension, making it both more pliant and considerably lighter, to the general betterment of the new Touareg’s handling and balance.

Away from well-surfaced motorways the Touareg feels unusually deft through challenging B-roads and country lanes, with less body roll and more communicative steering than is the norm in the supersized off-roader class.

As if that wasn’t enough the 3.0-litre V6 engine has been put through its paces, too. Integrated stop-start technology and “regenerative” braking (where excess energy from the stoppers is funneled back into the power circuit) slash exhaust emissions and fuel consumption. The new 8-speed automatic gearbox, with extra long seventh and eighth speed gears, helps, too. Interestingly, the top two ratios are genuine overdrives - the Touareg reaches its top speed in sixth.

As a result, the exhaust emits just 195 g/km of carbon dioxide and the 3.0-litre diesel can stretch a gallon of DERV nearly 40 miles - results more representative of a 2.0-litre mid-sized 4x4 than a car of the Touareg’s stature.

Although the trend among today’s premium 4x4s is to build in ever greater luxury, VW hasn’t forgotten the Touareg’s off-road credentials.

The re-designed four-wheel-drive system offers better ground clearance and improved departure angles - just the job for a spot of fording through river beds and pulling up steep river banks.

If you love getting down ‘n dirty then the even tougher 4XMotion model, which has lower gearing, tougher drive-line differentials and a larger fuel tank, will probably be your ideal partner in slime.

Although nearly forty big ones is a lot of money to spend on a set of wheels, the Touareg is actually something of a bargain when judged against its contemporaries.

A BMW X5 30d SE costs a not inconsiderable £5,000 more, as does a Porsche Cayenne diesel and a Mercedes ML350 CDI.

Used car experts reckon the excellence of its V6 diesel engine will help the Touareg to retain its value, too, so as a long term ownership proposition it’s a win-win situation.

These days a sales figure of more than half a million (the total achieved by the original Touareg during its lifetime) is a massive figure for a gargantuan off-roader - but if VW’s improvements translate into hard sales then the new Touareg should have no problems reaching the target set by its late-predecessor.