They say it’s ‘ready for customers.’ Like a bakery.
Outside the town of Saragossa in Spain, a group of engineers are patting themselves on the back for a job well done. After months upon months of intense testing, the team from Volkswagen have completed the final phase of pre-production evaluations and tweaking, and have signed off on the 2019 Touareg as ‘ready for the customer.’ Now, they wait for the reveal.
It’s interesting when Volkswagen ditches their usual narrative in their official communication. The release teasing the new Touareg, which we expect to see at the Geneva motor show next week, takes us on a journey through Spain and puts us beside the engineering team who’ve worked hard to get the big, premium SUV to its present state of readiness.
The Aragon region of Spain was selected for the “approval test run” of the Touareg, due to its challenging, varied, and diverse conditions. The engineers have driven thousands of kilometres on a whole assortment of surfaces through a myriad of conditions, ensuring that the new Touareg will work faultlessly on arrival.
The release does at least confirm a few things. Firstly, the Touareg will be more agile than it used to be, thanks to new stabilisers affixed to the front and rear axles that can be engaged, disengaged, and adjusted endlessly in between. As such, the Touareg now manages to “reduce the lateral lift of the Touareg to almost zero.”
On top of that, the release confirmed that the new-generation Touareg will feature four-wheel steering for the first time, too. The Touareg’s rear wheels will move either in tandem with the fronts (up to a specific degree) or opposite to them in high- and low-speeds respectively, increasing high-speed stability and low-epees manoeuvrability.
No mention was made regarding the motivation for the new Touareg, though we know a few things already. We know that a series of four-cylinder forced-induction engines will feature, as well as a plug-in hybrid variant that’s said to offer as much as 285kW and 700Nm of punch. Further, it’s been suggested that there may be as much as 80km of all-electric range on offer with the Touareg PHEV, contributing to a touted fuel consumption figure of just 2.45L/100km.
What was at least discussed was the interior of the new car. The new Touareg is said to offer two digital screens handling the instrumentation and infotainment duties, displayed on a 12-inch and 15-inch display respectively. Interestingly, VW’s mentioned that the two screens are “integrated into the instrument panel and appear as one surface.” From the teaser image, we can see that the centre stack appears to be tilted ever-so-slightly towards the driver, which to us, suggests that perhaps there is a discreet angled joint where the two screens meet. That’d be kind cool.
What’s also pretty clear (to us at least) is that Volkswagen will retain a landscape orientation to its infotainment display (we actually discussed this at length: The 12-inch screen is obviously for the instruments, and a 15-inch portrait screen would look great, but we’ve not heard anything about VW rejigging its infotainment systems for portrait displays). Expect to find the usual array of HVAC controls beneath the infotainment screen, built to that same, satisfying standard that VW’s always tend to be.
Don’t take our word as gospel though, people. We’d like to be pleasantly surprised with what Volkswagen’s capable of.
The new Touareg is, again, expected to make its global debut at the Geneva motor show, with the car said to be hitting showrooms (presumably in Germany first, if not greater Europe) in exactly 17-weeks. As the Geneva show commences next week, be sure to stay tuned to CarShowroom as we bring you more updates as they come.
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