VW Tayron review: seven seats and 600 miles on a single tank

Times

a day ago

Volkswagen's latest sports utility vehicle has lots of good points — spacious, practical and less ugly than its rivals — but no one is talking about it, possibly because it has the least memorable name in motoring history. The Tayron follows the Taigun, Taos, Tiguan, T-Roc, T-Cross and Touareg — all two-syllable names beginning with T and all easily confused. The industry joke is that VW's next two models will the Taser and the Toenail. What's behind this naming strategy no one at the company's group HQ seems able to say, but the Tayron deserves better because it's a seven-seater SUV that can go for up to 600 miles between fill-ups on just a 55-litre tank, an impressive rate of up to 50mpg.
Automotive technology has progressed in leaps and bounds, and no more so than in cutting fuel consumption of bigger cars. And the Tayron is big — a veritable warehouse on wheels. If you've ever faced the problem that the stuff you stow in your boot to take on holiday mysteriously swells in volume and won't fit when it's time to return, the Tayron may be the answer. Collapsing the second and third rows of seats gives you nearly two cubic metres of storage — enough for a couple of washing machines or a decent-sized wardrobe. Even with all the seats in place there's as much luggage room as in a Mercedes A-class. Short of buying a van, it's hard to think of a vehicle that offers more boot for your buck.
For its size it's reasonably inexpensive too, starting at £40,130 for the 'Life' trim. But there's a catch: £40,000 is the threshold for the government's 'expensive car supplement', or luxury car tax, which means it will cost you an extra £425 a year in vehicle excise duty for five years. Yet the Tayron is hardly the epitome of mink-lined opulence. It's actually a rather practical and down-to-earth family bus that's cheaper than the £45,218 average price of a new petrol car. The eTSI version is powered by an ingenious combination of 1.5-litre combustion engine and an electric motor that gives extra oomph when you're accelerating, then, when you're slowing down, it charges the car's battery. The energy recovery system is linked to the car's electronic brain and knows when you're approaching a junction or entering a lower speed limit. As you lift your foot off the accelerator it reduces your speed at a controlled rate, turning the car's momentum into electricity. It's an odd sensation at first, as though there are phantom feet on the pedals, but you can override it at any time by putting your foot back on the throttle.
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And here's the rub. Pressured by governments into lowering fuel consumption, carmakers have been inventive in coming up with new hybrid engine designs such as this to eke out the miles. In doing so they've become victims of their own success. More miles per gallon equals less fuel duty for Treasury coffers. So governments are imposing new taxes such as the luxury car tax to plug the gap.
For a jumbo SUV, the Tayron is remarkably easy to drive around town, relentlessly cushioning speed bumps and potholes. It's also good on motorways, where at cruising speed it's silent, boring even, thanks to acoustic insulation and double-glazed glass. The only time it gets noisy is when you mash your foot into the floor mat getting up to speed on a motorway slip road. Then the 1.5-litre engine struggles even with electrical assistance.
The Tayron's bad points are mainly to do with the shonky infotainment system. VW has been criticised by its own customers for a 'driver interface' that is distracting when you're trying to adjust settings on the move. The company says it's taken the complaints on board but it's still a faff to perform basic tasks such as turning on air recirculation when you get stuck behind a lorry belching fumes. To make things worse, the touch controls on the display try to anticipate your command, so you go to jab the screen and it's changed before your finger has made contact. The international safety organisation NCAP is pressuring manufacturers to bring back buttons and switches to encourage drivers to keep their eyes on the road.
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Another annoyance is the cheesily named 'mood' settings that turn up the ambient lighting and music volume. You can toggle through Lounge, Joy and Me. VW's target customers — parents with big families — are likely to wonder who exactly these were designed for. A mood called Stressed might be more appropriate. Then there's the Tayron name. A few times while I was testing the car people wandered over at petrol stations to ask what I was driving. After chatting a while, they'd try to recall the name and never could. 'It's the T'ai chi? Tie pin?'
So, the Tayron. A good car, solidly put together and a faithful load-lugger. If you're no fan of big SUVs you won't like it. If you're an exhausted parent you may find it just the job. Don't worry if you can't recall the name — no one else can.