Volkswagen Tiguan: Managing expectations

THE FIRST thing the Tiguan projects is a sense of solidity.

With the long wait finally over, the Volkswagen brand is finally back in the Philippines. Please banish preconceived thoughts of rusty, noisy Beetles and look closely at the Tiguan. This is Volkswagen’s future.

The Tiguan is based on Volkswagen Group’s A-platform code-named PQ35 for small and certain midsize cars with diesel or gasoline engines and FWD or AWD platforms. Thus the Tiguan shares much of its platform with other VW brand products, chief of which is Audi’s Q3 CUV and A3 hatchback.

With this in mind, I thought, could this be a budget luxury car, or will Volkswagen truly be the “people’s car,” which is what its name translates to in English?

Digressing a bit, when we imagine European cars, there are a number of things that do come to mind immediately: fast, powerful, cantankerous electrical, overheating, solidity, high-speed refinement, lairy handling. A mix of good and bad, certainly far removed from our perception of mass-market Asian-branded cars. Cynics will argue that just because a car is European in make, it doesn’t mean it is better than its rivals from Japan and Korea.

But the Tiguan seems to defend its “Deutschland Uber Alles” position: The first thing that the Tiguan projects is that of a sense of solidity. In the world of mass-market cars, the Tiguan feels like it’s been hewn from a forged piece of aluminum. Close the doors, and it is quiet inside. Move off, and the controls feel, well, heavy compared to a typical Toyota or Honda. It is this sense of heft, of weight, of mass that projects a sense of quality, of fine craftsmanship and class from the Volkswagen. It feels as solid as a Panzer tank and grips like one too, thanks to 4MOTION’s permanent Haldex-coupling-equipped All-Wheel Drive. And should your Panzer go awry given the worst conditions, fear not, the Tiguan comes standard with electronic stability control, ABS brakes, six airbags and a parking brake hold mode to prevent you and your Panzer from rolling backward or forward when moving off from a slope, or in traffic. Very good stuff.

However, coming from a country reared in cheap, affordable FWD Japanese, and later Korean cars, we’re used to certain things. These are the seating position (which unfortunately is a very poor one in most Japanese and Korean cars), a sense of lightness, delicacy and even lack of feel at times from the controls, the positioning of the switchgear (the VW utilizes a knob on the left of the steering column to activate the headlights as opposed to being on the column-stalk for most Japanese and Korean cars as an example), even the interior colors. We’re pretty much used to black, gray and different shades of, uhm, beige. In monotone. With the Volkswagen, we get hints of plaid, coffee, brown, black and gray all together. It’s a bit rich for the uninitiated, and to some feels like a comfy, old den but not a car interior. Going back to the seating position, the VW Tiguan seats you properly: bum low, knees up, arms and shoulders level with the steering wheel, and as far away as possible from the dashboard. This protects you from the potential airbag deployment and submarining into the footwell, mating your chest to the steering wheel, dashboard or engine in the event of a collision. In most Japanese cars, it pretty much feels like sitting on a stone-cold, slippery, flat bench. But this very European seating position takes some getting used to indeed. Out back, it’s quite roomy but you need to duck to get in as the doors are on the smallish side. Your feet slide underneath the front seats, plus the front seats have sculpted backsides to help you gain some knee- and foot-room. Good, but with some getting used to required.

So you get a very solid chassis, a suspension well-damped for even our very bad roads (the Tiguan has perfectly judged firmness for high-speed stability and compliance for low-speed comfort), a rich interior that doesn’t feel crass and tasteless. There MUST be a caveat to all this goodness, you might ask? Well, you don’t get LED/HID lights for starters, and no leather for this variant, and you also don’t get the high-spec 2.0 TDI engine with 168 horsepower/350 Newton-meters of torque and the excellent seven-speed, dual-clutch transmission; instead you get the older 138 HP/320 Newton-meters of torque with only a six-speed automatic transmission powering all fours. A deficit of 30 HP and 30 Newton-meters of torque, versus one less gear when compared to Tiguans sold in Europe, and more tellingly, Audi’s Q3 sold locally might not seem much, but in reality, it makes all the difference between sprightly and stupid quick. And it’s quite thirsty too: in-city driving netted me a best of only 8.7 clicks per liter, and I wasn’t even driving hard. Normally I’d say this is OK, but I’ve seen an easy 12 kilometers per liter from the newer 175-HP 2.0 TDI engine from other VW-brand products. Cargo space isn’t THAT big as well, I can’t see fitting my golf bag without dropping the rear seats. Not good.

But given its price, at P2.1 million, does the VW Tiguan make any sense at all? Below that segment, you get excellent, compact SUVs, such as Subaru’s Forester XT, KIA’s Sorento and Honda’s CR-V to name a few. Add a little more and you have a top-model Hyundai Santa Fe with more space and power. Sure, the cars mentioned are not direct competitors of the Tiguan as it’s in its own niche. But the pricing just throws things off by a lot. I like the Tiguan a lot, but it’s in a precarious position, price-wise. If VW can offer more goodies in the Tiguan for the same price like leather seats and HID/LED headlamps, that might have sealed the deal. Or lop maybe P500,000 from the current price, they’d have a winner.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a really well-accomplished car. With excellent safety spec, good power-train combination and that sophisticated VW-German badge. But it’s expensive for what it offers when competitors have really closed the gap. Or it should offer more goodies and equipment for its price.