With their latest edition of the Touareg Hybrid, Volkswagen seems to aspire to reach a level of newness and innovation.

The first thing you need to know is the Touareg Hybrid is much more about luxury than it is about fuel efficiency. The SUV shares the same platform as the Porsche Cayenne and Audi supplies the engine. The 26 mpg won’t please too many environmentalists however VW claims the latest Touareg will go 0-60 in 6.5 seconds and top out at 150mph, which should please most drivers.

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The hybrid also has the ability to deactivate the petrol engine whenever needed, a perfect combination of an electric motor and an 8-speed automatic transmission.

VW is that brand the floats under the radar, never universally mentioned as great yet, undoubtedly always a factor. You see them on the road all the time and everywhere and will continue to with the new Touareg. First off, on the 2011 model they changed the body significantly. The design language is different–you’ll notice that immediately. From far away it looks bigger but up close you can see that difference isn’t optical illusion. The new model is longer, wider, lighter and a little lower than its predecessor (480 centimeters long to be exact, 194 centimeters on the width).  It looks contemporary but not so much really modern just fresh. It has that thing that all VW cars have where it might not look like it’s pushing the envelope in design per se, but it somehow still is pushing it. It’s uncomplicated but definitely an attractive car.

The new Touareg has a very handsome interior as well. We can’t front on the inside of the car. It sits five grown adults’ easy—not European adults— meaning overweight Americans. At the end of the day those of us who are carrying a little extra poundage should feel comfortable in this car. The trunk is ok; you won’t be able to move any furniture but its standard I guess. You’ll be able to put some boxes back there, some weights, a couple pair of sneakers, etc. It is what it is. I would be remiss if is didn’t mention the seats. The leather is butter soft, granted that’s a prerequisite for luxury models these days and I’m not necessarily saying that VW should get points for having that. However, I can’t just pretend that when I touched the seat with my own hand I didn’t acknowledge how nice it felt. It’s impressively soft, next level soft, seemingly as soft as someone could hope.

The price tag is expected to be well north of 50K. It will be interesting to see how that flies in this unstable economy. –Khalid Salaam

Tags: 2011 Touareg, hybrid, Volkswagen

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 7:07 am by KHA and is filed under Auto, SUV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.