NM Magazine - April 2012.pdf - Naked Motoring SA

Sigh! Once again my Aryan pride swells greatly
in my skinny chest. I must admit that when I
saw it I thought it was going to be something I
would have to really work on to get a good
feel for. It looks like a luxury SUV that we are
quite familiar with in Gauteng.
Aesthetically from the outside it has all the
right bits in the right places. One thing I did
Leon Rehrl
like from that point of view was the absence
of the spare wheel on the rear door. That is just my opinion so
I won’t go on about that too much. The colour was also cool,
the same colour as my Aryan blood, bwaahahaha!
Ok, seriously though, when I got in and eventually got through
playing with the electric seat I dutifully strapped myself in and
did a double take. This is about as luxurious as
you can get. Leather seats and on the doors
there is some leather too. Carpets you can
make fists with your toes in (something I
believe the ladies like doing when they take
their high heels off to drive. . . I hope!) You
literally float in this car even on our ugly roads
in GP. I found myself checking the logo on the
steering wheel to see if I was perhaps driving
an unmentionable alternate German brand.
No seriously, I did look quite a few times. The
Tiguan has a whole wad of carefully thought
out and extremely practical features that make
this SUV so much fun to drive. Things that
genuinely put a smile on your face when you
get into it. The first I saw, which had to be
pointed out but one which I found very
practical, was the folding tow-bar. A swift tug
Copyright Naked Motoring 2012
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on a cleverly disguised knob folds the tow-bar into the undercarriage
so your wife’s sonic parking will be a ding on both
cars in stead of your car being mauled by the tow-bar.
Another is the turning assist lights that automatically come on
when you indicate either left or right providing the headlights
are on. Great for missing the curb and scuffing the hub-caps.
Something that is quite easy to do in a SUV.
There are also the usual OPS (Optical Park Sensors) that help
aforementioned sonic parkers avoid the ‘oops’ moments and I
feel that I should mention that I have been known to have
those moments so I really appreciated that especially in a car
that size and quality. Another thing that really made an
impression on me was the Blue Motion Technology.
Admittedly I was having too much fun driving to notice how
many kilometres I had done ( approx. 350-400km) there was