Post by Big Blue on Jan 4, 2020 23:39:18 GMT
Well, it's been a while since I did this, the last one being the wedding car Skoda Kodiak. That's mainly because in the summer I had a Qashqai in Spain for spring half term, a Golf in the summer in Slovakia and a Renault Captur in France, all of which I have written about before. I did also rent a Skoda Superb for one day from the Hilton desk in Turkey and it was very big, very comfy and very well-specced. We had a nice day trip out from the holiday complex to Oludeniz watching maniacs throw themselves off a cliff and paraglide down to the beach. I was surprised to be bomb checked on the way back in to the complex - but better safe than sorry.
None of those got a write up and I have no pictures of the Superb, one of the Golf, three of the Captur and one of the Qashqai. That sums up how excited I was by them. So, having just watched the last episode of The Grand Tour on the aeroplane home it seems only correct that this Christmas holiday car was a too-tall, modern family-focussed diesel of the kind that has done for the Mondeo. To be fair these “soft-roaders” have themselves done to MPVs what MPVs did to large saloons. And it’s German, so another nail in the Mondeo coffin, probably actually the last pat-down with the shovel on the earth atop the grave. It was a VW Tiguan R-Line 4x4 Diesel Auto.
So it looks pleasant enough from the outside. It was also as good as brand new so it was gleaming when I got it. For about ten minutes before I joined the motorway towards Hungary. The motorway was the first chance to measure the engine - it pulls well enough and I was glad it was an auto as this takes away a million gearshifts just to stay in the power band. Overall it was as fast as it needs to be, probably faster, but never felt lacking and I had a few country road overtakes I wouldn’t have done in a rental Golf.
Let's look at the interior, which is probably the most defining feature of a family car from the occupants' point of view. Well it was very comfy with massage driver's seat which was not clad in some elephant hide leather but some cloth and a sort of grippy sub-alcantara material: I love not having leather seats with decent sports seats. There was loads of room all round and the rear seats slide and tilt to help balance boot space with leg room. Which leads us on to practicality.
There is a reason why a zillion Qashqais have been sold and the Tiguan fits that reasoning. You don’t feel like you’re in a van but you’re not in a car either. Lots of family space, enough luggage space that I didn’t need to compromise rear vision with all the luggage and coats on board and rear tables kept the kids quiet. Plenty of cubby holes for phones, charge packs, water bottles, wallets, handbags, bottles of champagne safe in the boot etc. etc. This one was absolutely LOADED with kit: Radar cruise, voodoo LED lights (if I drove a lot and in the dark these would be first option - amazing to drive along country roads watching the lights move around as required), heated & massage seat, Nav, Black Panel dash, Apple CarPlay, full glass sunroof, lane departure, probably other stuff I didn’t find. Goodness knows who at Europcar Vienna specced this but I bet they enjoy it every night it’s not booked out. One criticism: there are possibly too many controls in close proximity on the steering wheel. It may be that I have fat thumbs (I don’t) but it was occasionally not instinctive to find the correct button without either error or a quick look.
Black panel: special mention to the black panel given how I’ve complained about the dull Golf versions I’ve had in the past. It changes to show what you want how you want and the map / direction / speed limit views almost negate the need for HUD. I was so smitten with it I'm going to share far too many pictures with you:
Nav directions in centre of dash.
View from the driver's seat at night with map in the centre console and direction on the driver binnacle.
Dials with map in the middle.
Full map in driver binnacle. Love this view: it's like a video game or flying simulator.
Daytime map view, also showing the number of steering wheel controls in close proximity to one another.
So, on the move how does it ride and not just on the newly surfaced A4 in Austria and bowling alley smooth M1 in Hungary? Very comfortably is the answer. Smooth power chain despite me leaving it in Sport, and using sport gearbox and our sometime-travel-sick daughter survived a 3hr trip to the mountains without any issues (mainly by not looking at the iPad) and W2.1 even commented how nice it was. I hit a rather aggressive speed hump at one point: doing 50kph I saw it late and only managed to scrub down to around 35-40. Suspension bottomed out at both ends but it took the bash with few issues. The Gorilla would have had square wheels and any number of lights would have flared up on the dash if I did that to it!
It did see some snow - and ignored it by going so far as to behave like it did on the dry road.
I've only just realised why a lot of cars moved over for me on the motorways: this was a black SUV with blacked out windows and black wheels. Clearly to the average onlooker we were a gangster family. Nice!
So the Queef bit you've all been waiting for: handling. Well for what it is (a midi 4x4 SUV) it handles far better than it has a right to. Confident into turns, nice feedback at the wheel, swaps directions on and off roundabouts with a bit of verve and sweeps along the motorway with little fuss even at sub-zero temperatures. Maybe the winter tyres move a bit more (I could feel through the wheel) but hitting a very slippery bit coming into a village on the way up to the mountains they did their bit with little fuss. It also has that funny 4x4 feel as you turn in - if you’ve driven an Audi TT Quattro you’ll know what I mean - but that’s just a trait of being pushed and pulled at the same time. On country roads at night on the way home (SK home!) it was surprisingly good at body control and the girls were told to sit back in their seats by W2.1 because “daddy is driving like a maniac”. I wasn’t of course but it was good fun.
So the bit I don't understand given what I drive and how often in England: economy. We covered 1,140kms and drove around town, on the motorway, sat in the traffic jam at the Austrian border, down fast country roads, through villages and up a snowy mountain. I made no effort to drive economically, 140-150 cruise on the motorways, no real aggressive driving and was in Sport all the time, never used Drive unless three point turn manoeuvring. Given all that the fuel top-up measure recorded 39.222mpg can be regarded as a “real world” average as this is what a family car would do in my hands. In all honesty that's amazing.
I need to come to some form of conclusion which is kind of difficult because I'm going to start with: "probably all the car you need as a family". I say that a lot about rental cars and that’s indicative of the car industry understanding its market and products. So what do car companies need to do to make their products stand out? Well the badge helps this one and I suspect if I didn’t have such a massively over-specced car I’d not be so enamoured. It feels like it would be solid for a decade or two so maybe climbing aboard an old VW product and then a similar aged competitor might be one solution in decision making. That and the finances of running whatever you choose - no idea about what is acceptable in terms of PCP or HP costs these days but I'm assuming if there was £50/month difference between this and some other SUV this one would get my post-tax cash.
In the end despite being great to pilot, comfy, good looking and well built the Tiguan remains a quantity of “some car”. Mind you the Gorilla is the same aside from its insane engine output and body control no giant wagon deserves to possess. In reality if you’re an enthusiast you need several cars. And of course the time and road space to use and enjoy them. In the realistic absence of both the Tiguan is a fit enough all rounder.
Brutalist shot by the side of the Danube. That yellow shack-like building on the water is the Yacht Club of Komarno with ship-building sheds sitting idle in the background. Roads and HGVs have taken much of the traffic away from the biggest river in Europe.
None of those got a write up and I have no pictures of the Superb, one of the Golf, three of the Captur and one of the Qashqai. That sums up how excited I was by them. So, having just watched the last episode of The Grand Tour on the aeroplane home it seems only correct that this Christmas holiday car was a too-tall, modern family-focussed diesel of the kind that has done for the Mondeo. To be fair these “soft-roaders” have themselves done to MPVs what MPVs did to large saloons. And it’s German, so another nail in the Mondeo coffin, probably actually the last pat-down with the shovel on the earth atop the grave. It was a VW Tiguan R-Line 4x4 Diesel Auto.
So it looks pleasant enough from the outside. It was also as good as brand new so it was gleaming when I got it. For about ten minutes before I joined the motorway towards Hungary. The motorway was the first chance to measure the engine - it pulls well enough and I was glad it was an auto as this takes away a million gearshifts just to stay in the power band. Overall it was as fast as it needs to be, probably faster, but never felt lacking and I had a few country road overtakes I wouldn’t have done in a rental Golf.
Let's look at the interior, which is probably the most defining feature of a family car from the occupants' point of view. Well it was very comfy with massage driver's seat which was not clad in some elephant hide leather but some cloth and a sort of grippy sub-alcantara material: I love not having leather seats with decent sports seats. There was loads of room all round and the rear seats slide and tilt to help balance boot space with leg room. Which leads us on to practicality.
There is a reason why a zillion Qashqais have been sold and the Tiguan fits that reasoning. You don’t feel like you’re in a van but you’re not in a car either. Lots of family space, enough luggage space that I didn’t need to compromise rear vision with all the luggage and coats on board and rear tables kept the kids quiet. Plenty of cubby holes for phones, charge packs, water bottles, wallets, handbags, bottles of champagne safe in the boot etc. etc. This one was absolutely LOADED with kit: Radar cruise, voodoo LED lights (if I drove a lot and in the dark these would be first option - amazing to drive along country roads watching the lights move around as required), heated & massage seat, Nav, Black Panel dash, Apple CarPlay, full glass sunroof, lane departure, probably other stuff I didn’t find. Goodness knows who at Europcar Vienna specced this but I bet they enjoy it every night it’s not booked out. One criticism: there are possibly too many controls in close proximity on the steering wheel. It may be that I have fat thumbs (I don’t) but it was occasionally not instinctive to find the correct button without either error or a quick look.
Black panel: special mention to the black panel given how I’ve complained about the dull Golf versions I’ve had in the past. It changes to show what you want how you want and the map / direction / speed limit views almost negate the need for HUD. I was so smitten with it I'm going to share far too many pictures with you:
Nav directions in centre of dash.
View from the driver's seat at night with map in the centre console and direction on the driver binnacle.
Dials with map in the middle.
Full map in driver binnacle. Love this view: it's like a video game or flying simulator.
Daytime map view, also showing the number of steering wheel controls in close proximity to one another.
So, on the move how does it ride and not just on the newly surfaced A4 in Austria and bowling alley smooth M1 in Hungary? Very comfortably is the answer. Smooth power chain despite me leaving it in Sport, and using sport gearbox and our sometime-travel-sick daughter survived a 3hr trip to the mountains without any issues (mainly by not looking at the iPad) and W2.1 even commented how nice it was. I hit a rather aggressive speed hump at one point: doing 50kph I saw it late and only managed to scrub down to around 35-40. Suspension bottomed out at both ends but it took the bash with few issues. The Gorilla would have had square wheels and any number of lights would have flared up on the dash if I did that to it!
It did see some snow - and ignored it by going so far as to behave like it did on the dry road.
I've only just realised why a lot of cars moved over for me on the motorways: this was a black SUV with blacked out windows and black wheels. Clearly to the average onlooker we were a gangster family. Nice!
So the Queef bit you've all been waiting for: handling. Well for what it is (a midi 4x4 SUV) it handles far better than it has a right to. Confident into turns, nice feedback at the wheel, swaps directions on and off roundabouts with a bit of verve and sweeps along the motorway with little fuss even at sub-zero temperatures. Maybe the winter tyres move a bit more (I could feel through the wheel) but hitting a very slippery bit coming into a village on the way up to the mountains they did their bit with little fuss. It also has that funny 4x4 feel as you turn in - if you’ve driven an Audi TT Quattro you’ll know what I mean - but that’s just a trait of being pushed and pulled at the same time. On country roads at night on the way home (SK home!) it was surprisingly good at body control and the girls were told to sit back in their seats by W2.1 because “daddy is driving like a maniac”. I wasn’t of course but it was good fun.
So the bit I don't understand given what I drive and how often in England: economy. We covered 1,140kms and drove around town, on the motorway, sat in the traffic jam at the Austrian border, down fast country roads, through villages and up a snowy mountain. I made no effort to drive economically, 140-150 cruise on the motorways, no real aggressive driving and was in Sport all the time, never used Drive unless three point turn manoeuvring. Given all that the fuel top-up measure recorded 39.222mpg can be regarded as a “real world” average as this is what a family car would do in my hands. In all honesty that's amazing.
I need to come to some form of conclusion which is kind of difficult because I'm going to start with: "probably all the car you need as a family". I say that a lot about rental cars and that’s indicative of the car industry understanding its market and products. So what do car companies need to do to make their products stand out? Well the badge helps this one and I suspect if I didn’t have such a massively over-specced car I’d not be so enamoured. It feels like it would be solid for a decade or two so maybe climbing aboard an old VW product and then a similar aged competitor might be one solution in decision making. That and the finances of running whatever you choose - no idea about what is acceptable in terms of PCP or HP costs these days but I'm assuming if there was £50/month difference between this and some other SUV this one would get my post-tax cash.
In the end despite being great to pilot, comfy, good looking and well built the Tiguan remains a quantity of “some car”. Mind you the Gorilla is the same aside from its insane engine output and body control no giant wagon deserves to possess. In reality if you’re an enthusiast you need several cars. And of course the time and road space to use and enjoy them. In the realistic absence of both the Tiguan is a fit enough all rounder.
Brutalist shot by the side of the Danube. That yellow shack-like building on the water is the Yacht Club of Komarno with ship-building sheds sitting idle in the background. Roads and HGVs have taken much of the traffic away from the biggest river in Europe.
