It started as a whisper on the wind: diesel sucks. Soon, the entire world was turning against Volkswagen and Greenpeace was all "I told you so, but nobody listened." To make matters worse, the Tiguan which is the most important model they launch this year is not flawless.
We're not nitpicking here, as the previous generation didn't have nearly as many competent rivals as this one does. DSG gearbox? Hyundai has one too for the Tucson. Powerful and efficient diesel engine? It depends.
We've driven the 2.0 TDI with 150 horsepower on many cars. The Golf was brilliant, fast and somewhat sporty. The Passat... okay, but the Tiguan struggles to make good use due to its mass.
Below, you will find an acceleration test of the Tiguan 2.0 TDI 4Motion with DSG. We also added some other videos from the same channel because they were rather interesting. Anyway, if you count the seconds between the digital dash starts moving until it reaches 100 km/h there's going to be 9.4 of them. That's in line with the official claim of 9.3 seconds.
But since when is German engineering slightly slower than officially claimed. And even by SUV standards, that's not very good. For instance, a Honda CR-V 1.6 i-DTEC with a 9-speed takes 10 seconds.
That's one of my personal favorite compact SUVs because it rides over the bumps. While the CX-5 could be the only Mazda that I don't love, I distinctly remember that it can get to 100 km/h in as little as 8.8 seconds thanks to its 2.2-liter twin-turbo mill.
Is that an unfair advantage? Not if you compare the Tiguan to the CX-5 regarding price.
In my opinion, it's not Volkswagen's fault. Despite the MQB platform, any SUV that has an automatic gearbox and AWD is going to be pretty heavy, usually around 1.7 tons in this class.
That's why so many people buy crossovers. So in a way, SEAT got things right here with the much smaller Ateca.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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