Six of the best: The 3-litre V6 TDI-engined Touareg is up against strong competition in this sector ...

摘要

WHEN Volkswagen decided to design an SUV which would be capable of competing with BMW's X5 and the Range Rover, it wanted to achieve the best of both worlds. The engineers from Wolfsburg told us that they considered it superior to the X5 on the road, and equal to the Range Rover when off the beaten track. When it comes to assessing how well they succeeded with the Touareg, the easiest job is to weigh up its road performance. How well it copes off-road is more difficult, not because of finding sufficiently rugged terrain to test its abilities, but because, in this land of ours, SUVs don't come equipped with the sort of tyres which enable them to deal fully with such conditions. In fact, the chances are that very few Touaregs go anywhere very challenging, apart from traffic light grand prix and negotiating the chaos outside the local school.