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Long-term Test
Volkswagen Touareg V6 3.0 TDI

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Touareg at 10K
Fuelling Around
Great, but not perfect
Taking Delivery
Introduction

TOWING TALES

It was never really in doubt, but for the record, the VW Touareg 3.0-litre V6 turbodiesel is a useful tow-vehicle. In fact, it's a pretty darn good tow-vehicle. Not perfect, but pretty good.

To arrive at this opinion, first we hooked up a well-worn 16-foot caravan -- which itself was laden with three offroad motorcycles, three full sets of riding gear, solid and liquid refreshments and even a hefty pressure-washer.

This lot was hauled a couple of hundred kilometres to a dirtbike club family weekend. The tow was in the sort of wind that hits the Melbourne area at the change of season. And on the way it was either side or head-on, but seemingly never from behind -- which we will charitably suggest might to some extent account for the hefty 19.0L/100km fuel burn.

In fact, the Touareg barely felt the large aluminium 'sail-on-wheels' behind it. On long sweeping downhill curves, a mid-corner bump could set up a slight shimmy, but with the deep reserves of torque available, just a touch of the throttle banished the weave.

Another opportunity to try out the Touareg as a tow-car came via water-carting duties around Chez Kealy. This saw us hook up a sturdy 6x4 (1800 x 1200mm) box trailer fitted with a 'cube' -- a one cubic metre cubic plastic tank commonly used for moving water on rural properties. One cubic metre of water is 1000 litres, which weighs (got to love the decimal system) 1000kg.

Interestingly, and through no fault of the Volkswagen, this was more of a challenge.

The cube didn't have a lid, so it couldn't be filled to the brim -- and when it's not absolutely full, the water will slop around, generating a surprising amount of latitudinal and longitudinal inertia. This in turn, tugs the rear of the tow-vehicle every which way.

Happily, the VW weighs a great deal more than 1000kg and in the inertia tug-of-war, it won -- every time. As you'd expect -- VW's maximum towing rating for the Touareg is a solid 3500kg, in the case of a braked trailer.

The cube was towed -- empty and full -- on both asphalt and dirt roads. Only when it was full and on a steep dirt section did the traction control lamp blink momentarily. Similarly, it was the unruly cube and not the bike-laden caravan which prompted the VW to invoke its ABS momentarily.

The VW's six-speed auto transmission was well up to the task, but in the interests of containing fuel consumption, slipping the shift lever into manual mode and shifting down a cog or two ahead of hills was prudent. Similarly, shifting down for engine braking helped contain downhill speed.

Yet it would seem that the Touareg treads lighter than most SUVs -- a slithery two-foot brown snake suffered a direct hit from two of the Touareg's tyres but wasn't killed outright. In the absence of anything else, a humane coup d'grace was required on a second trip.

We really liked the Touareg's auto-closing tailgate, felt the vehicle could do with height-adjustable headlamps -- and loathed, hated and detested the frustratingly, irritatingly unnecessary auto-self locking doors, which triggered every time the VW exceeded about 4km/h, and resisted all attempts to de-program.

Despite that, we're looking forward to more opportunities to test the Touareg's horizons.

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Also read:
Touareg at 10K
Fuelling Around
Great, but not perfect
Taking Delivery
Introduction