2007 Volkswagen Touareg

The Touareg is a comfortable ride, and Volkswagen gives the interior a luxury feel with leather seats and quality materials all around. It seats five and has a small cargo area, making it a practical vehicle for many uses. Similar to crossover vehicles, which are all the rage, the driving position has an SUV's height, but the suspension and handling are much more carlike. The Touareg presents a very refined look, which seems at odds with its off-road gear, which includes differential locking and off-road navigation.

Lux interior
With leather seats, nice fabric on the headliner, wood accents around the shifter, and four-zone climate control, the Touareg doesn't seem like the kind of vehicle that would be scrabbling through the backcountry. This refinement is offset by a meaty shifter, while the plastic around the electronics on the center stack looks a little cheap.

The interface for navigation and the stereo work reasonably well, with 9 function buttons along the bottom of the LCD; 2 knobs for volume, tuning, and selection; and 10 soft buttons on either side of the LCD. It's a little cluttered, and drivers will have to spend some time learning what the icons next to the various soft buttons mean. There is, fortunately, a Back button, that lets the driver back out of a menu. Along with cruise control buttons, the steering wheel includes buttons for volume control and for cycling through the various information screens available from a display between the tachometer and the speedometer, a nice touch. This instrument cluster screen shows information such as route guidance, range, and fuel economy.

We shouldn't have to go to the cargo area to load CDs.

The best thing about the Touareg's stereo (the premium version in our test car) is its sound quality, pumped out of 11 speakers around the cabin. The sound fills the capacious interior well, and the clarity, while not the best we've ever heard, is good. But we were very disappointed by the six-CD changer, hidden behind a panel in the cargo area. Beyond the access problem, the changer doesn't read MP3 CDs, although an iPod adapter is available.

The navigation system in the Touareg works all right, offering good route guidance and an easily read map. It's fairly easy to enter destinations, but the points-of-interest database is marred because only a couple of categories are available. Drivers can choose categories only for gas stations and parking. Restaurants, shopping centers, and other directory entries can't be chosen by category. Neither does the system include individual retail stores. The navigation system suffers from a slow processor, which causes maps to take a few seconds to redraw and route recalculation times to take longer than we would expect.

The navigation system's off-road mode details latitude, longitude, and elevation.

Because the Touareg is meant to be taken off-road, the navigation system adds some interesting functionality. First is the location screen, which shows latitude and longitude, elevation, and a compass. This screen is useful when the car is off of its DVD-based maps. Second is the off-road tour function, which lets the driver save a series of coordinate-based waypoints along a route. Once a tour is saved, the navigation system can help the driver retrace the route, even if there are no roads.

Volkswagen doesn't make Bluetooth cell phone integration available on the Touareg, a bit of a surprise given its other upscale appointments. The four-zone climate control is a nice touch, and the heated rear seats are something we haven't seen before. Both front seats get 12-way power adjustment, and the steering wheel position is power adjustable, as well.

Six speeds and a low range
Our test car came with a 3.6-liter V-6 engine, which is good for 276 horsepower and 266 lb.-ft. of torque. Other engines available on the Touareg are a 4.2-liter V-8 and a 5.0-liter diesel V-10. The V-6 didn't deliver particularly fast starts, a problem for maneuvering into traffic from a stop, but had adequate power once underway. This engine is mated to a six-speed automatic, a high point in the power train, which shifted smoothly and found the right gears for the current driving situation. The transmission offers good choices for the driver, with Drive, Sport, and manual selection modes.

But the Touareg's four-wheel-drive system is what makes the car unique. During normal driving, power is divided equally between the front and rear tires. A locking center differential automatically diverts up to 100 percent of power to either the front or rear tires, whichever needs it the most. A locking rear differential is available as an option but was not in our test car. In addition, for real off-road conditions, the car includes a low range that can be set from a dial next to the shifter.

Low range and differential locking can be dialed in easily.

For off-road prowess, Volkswagen boasts that the Touareg can handle a 45-degree slope either straight on or traversing. The doors and headlights are sealed against water, and it can ford streams almost 23 inches deep. Ground clearance is almost 12 inches. The steering wheel offers a responsive feel, although the Touareg is too high up for high-speed cornering.

The EPA rates the mileage of the 2007 V-6 Touareg at 16mpg city and 20mpg highway. We observed 16.8mpg in mixed city and freeway driving around Los Angeles, which is not great but not surprising for this size of vehicle. The car gets California's LEV II rating for emissions, which is decent for an SUV.

Intelligent safety
As we would expect from a high-end vehicle like the Touareg, safety gear is good, with front and side airbags for the driver and front passenger. In addition, side curtain airbags cover the entire cabin. The Touareg comes with Volkswagen's Intelligent Crash Response system, which, if it detects a collision, shuts off fuel, unlocks doors, and disconnects the battery.

For collision avoidance, the aforementioned four-wheel-drive helps out in slippery road conditions. It's aided by antilock brakes, electronic brakeforce distribution, braking assist, and traction control. A stability program helps prevent rollovers. A rearview camera plus front and rear audible park distance warnings keep drivers from hitting obstacles while parking.

The animated overlay on the rearview camera helps the driver avoid obstacles.

All of these safety devices give the Touareg five-star front and side impact ratings. It gets four stars for rollover, although that rating is actually near the top of the range for SUVs.

Our review car, a 2007 Volkswagen Touareg V-6, has a base price of $37,990. It included Package 2, which combines lots of little luxury accents, such as leather seats and power adjustable steering wheel, for $4,100. The Navigation Plus package, which combines some elements of the stereo with the navigation system, costs $3,350, and the four-zone climate control adds another $1,500. With a $670 destination fee, the total manufacturer price for our Touareg was $47,610.

Beyond its lack of love for MP3s, we found the Touareg a fairly comfortable car to drive around and big enough to fit passengers and cargo. The cabin tech is in need of an update, and we would like to see a more refined interface for using the navigation system. Although it costs almost $20,000 more, the Audi Q7 makes up for a few of these tech miscues. For less money, the Subaru B9 Tribeca has better electronics. But the Touareg's off-road systems inspire the confidence to take this car into the snow or desert. However, off-road devotees tend towards a more rugged image fulfilled by cars such as the Toyota FJ Cruiser, and the Touareg looks more like a car to arrive at the opera in.