Volkswagen Tiguan

₹ 28.93 – 32.44 lakh (ex-Mumbai) We say: Fabulous Family crossover spoilt by pricing

- Sriram Narayanan

After being in the ‘coming soon’ category in India for nearly a decade, Volkswagen has finally brought the third-gen Tiguan SUV here. Better late than never and all that. Right away, let’s deal with the elephant in the room. The price. We did think VW could’ve lopped off a couple of lakhs. Turns out, rather surprisingly, we are right. Apart from the 2.0-litre, four-cylinder, turbo-charged engine that’s made from the ground-up in VW’s Chakan plant, the rest of the Tiguan is put together with imported components. VW can easily up localisation and down prices to properly competitive levels. Besides, there are two caveats you may not read in any drive/review. One, VW hopes the onset of GST will bring prices down further. Two, if the response to the Tiguan is decent, VW will consider localising it. We sniff a vicious cycle with point two here, which we will get to later.

For now, the Tiguan headlines. Five seats, full-time all-wheel-drive, 2.0-litre, four-cylinder, 141bhp diesel engine, seven-speed dual clutch automatic, six airbags, hill-hold and hill-descent are standard across both variants. We certainly appreciate VW not indulging in a front-wheel-drive, petrol, manual  version with barely any features to claim a low starting price. Between the cheaper Comfort line and flagship Highline, the two major omissions in the cheaper Tiguan is a reversing camera and self sealing tyres. The company claims that unless the tyre has torn or is ripped apart, routine incursions like nails, pebbles, glass panes won’t need repairs or a tyre change. Does it really work? The only way to tell you is by using it long term.