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The Tiguan Is Volkswagen's Best-Selling Vehicle, 2021 Facelift Gets Teased

A couple of years ago, an interesting conflict was happening in the global car sales charts. Ford and Toyota were arguing over who had the best-selling car, and it was all about Focus vs. Corolla. We believed the Golf was close, but in the meantime, the Tiguan has become VW's top performer.
2021 Volkswagen Tiguan Mid-Cycle Facelift Teased 1 photo
Photo: Volkswagen
We're quite surprised by the numbers. Total Tiguan sales in 2007 were just 120,000 units. However, last year, they managed to assemble 911,000 of these crossovers in factories located all over the world. Almost one million of anything is impressive, but especially a crossover.

This makes the Tiguan the best-selling car in the VW brand, but also the entire VW Group. That means it's doing better than the Golf, Jetta, Audi A4 or Skoda Octavia.

The second-generation model we have right now was launched in April 2016. It's based on the now-famous MQB platform and marked several improvements over its predecessor, including a much wider body and the introduction of an XL body style with about 4 inches added to the wheelbase. About 55% of total production is in this long format, and if you didn't know about it that's because all North American versions have the longer wheelbase.

Volkswagen also took the opportunity to announce a facelift, which we already knew about. The official teaser photo hints at the cosmetic changes they will make, softening the square edges of the older model.

The press release also mentions that the MIB III infotainment system being available for the first time and a plug-in hybrid powertrain option. We expect this to wear the GTE badge, just like the concepts from many years ago, and have about 242 horsepower from a 1.4-liter turbo-four and an electric motor.

The European market will also welcome the yet unconfirmed Tiguan R with roughly 330 horsepower from a new type of 2.0-liter turbo. However, the "vanilla" Tiguan is also expected to receive more power, namely 228 hp via the same unit that's in the Audi Q3.
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About the author: Mihnea Radu
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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.
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