What's all this about?
The excellent second-generation Volkswagen Tiguan is going through its midlife model facelift. The general changes apply to both the five-seat regular SUV and the seven-seat Allspace, and they're pretty significant.
How so?
Well, first of all, the Tiguan looks quite different. It has a redesigned front end, with a broader grille, matrix LED headlights, a higher bonnet with a repositioned Volkswagen badge and a generally more familial look that better ties it in with its Touareg big brother. Then, inside, inspiration comes from the Golf 8, in the form of a heavily digitised interior that does away with physical buttons and controls. Much-improved infotainment control and 'IQ.Drive' assist systems make this a technologically more advanced vehicle than its immediate predecessor, too. All very nice. But then we come to the drivetrains.
Let me guess - tidied up for emissions regs, is all?
Hardly. Although you're right about that if you're only talking about the TDI turbodiesels, which have two-stage SCR exhaust cleaning which VW is calling 'Twin Dosing' - a process which reduces harmful NOx tailpipe nasties to benign water and nitrogen. However, there are two all-new powertrains, one green, and one red-hot.
Oh really?
Yup. First up is the Tiguan eHybrid. Weirdly, while it has a GTE driving mode, it eschews the 'GTE' badging of other Volkswagen PHEVs like the Passat GTE, but it is nevertheless a 245hp TSI petrol-electric hybrid with a 31-mile zero-emissions range and likely low CO2 emissions (yet to be confirmed). As the most powerful pre-facelift Tiguan Mk2 was the 240hp BiTurbo TDI, you might think this PHEV model would be the apex. But it isn't.
Because there's now, for the first time ever, a Tiguan R. Using an uprated version of the venerable EA888 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine, this thing has 320hp, 'R-Performance Torque Vectoring' all-wheel drive (which can fling up to 100 per cent of torque at any of the four given wheels, for maximum handling agility), and its own sporty styling inside and out. As there are already T-Roc R and Touareg R models in the line-up, a Tiguan R makes perfect sense. Although whether we'll now receive a T-Cross R or not remains to be seen.
Matt Robinson - 30 Jun 2020