Volkswagen Touran Review

The Touran is an unassuming car - in fact, WhatCar? found it to be positively boring and unimaginative in terms of appearance - but still went on to vote it the best compact MPV of 2004: WhatCar? review of Volkswagen Touran.

With that sort of recommendation, it was worth taking note.

On the technical side, it’s based on the reliable Golf model, so the basic car has a reliable history behind it.

But my main criteria for choosing a car were based on safety, space, and size. In these regards the Touran was very good.

It was one of the 5-star scoring cars on the European Ncap tests, so it’s a strong safe car for the family.

Additionally, it seemed easily wide enough to take child safety seats in its stride across the back seats, and the extra 2 seats in the 7-seater model were exactly what I was looking for.

However, somehow all this didn’t seem to create a car that looked large and cumbersome - it managed to feel compact and well used for storage space on the inside, while somehow only looking about as long and wide as a normal saloon - which was a definite surprise in a 7-seater model.

Another pleasant surprise is that having seen so many other models of cars come with optional extras, it was brilliant to see that Volkswagen had included most of these as default features of the Touran, leaving the optional extras as essential vanity features such as sunroof, alloys, and accessories.

The only significant gripe I could raise is that to operate the rear seats you have to use looped cords rather than plastic handles, which seems a clumsy way to operate them. Additionally, there are some storage compartments under the roof between the driver and passenger seats, but I really can’t see what these can be used for, other than perhaps storing sunglasses - for which the compartments seem over-sized.

Overall, the car is safe, compact, and there’s a lot of storage, and I can’t find any significant disadvantage with this car - it seems a great and overall general purpose family car, with loads of room, and is definitely on my list of best.