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Volkswagen Touareg R50: a titanic destroyer that takes no prisoners
THIS week I have been the centre of attention - for all the wrong reasons.
Attractive young girls have been throwing themselves at me, married women have been filing decree nisis, and random blokes have tried to befriend me - probably to accept their wives' advances.
I have also noticed plod eyeing me up, with a view to kicking in my door in the depths of night and ransacking my house in search of drugs, guns and other underworld paraphernalia. I'd put my mortgage on this car ending up in a Guy Ritchie gangster flick sometime soon.
Meanwhile, on a journey to Essex, I had to request a BP fuel tanker to escort me, with a hosepipe docked to the car at all times as a life support machine, to prevent my chariot slipping into a hard shoulder coma.
At one point, I swear I saw a battalion of Rainbow Warriors hurling a barrage of compacted sheep dung rocks at me.
And all of this was because I had the audacity to be tootling around in a 5m long (16ft), two-and-a-half tonne, little runaround. FIVE metres! My first swimming badge was for 5m, and I sewed it into my Noddy trunks with pride.
Actually, 'little runaround' probably doesn't best describe the Volkswagen Touareg R50.
Try colossus; behemoth; titan; destroyer; or anything else that intimates the sheer scale of this thing. Others might plump for monstrosity, travesty or worse.
The fact of the matter is, this is one of the biggest 'cars' available on the road today. My first impression of it led me to think I should dress in khaki, pull on a helmet and drive it with my head sticking out of the sunroof.
So what do you get for your 62,000 - apart from funny looks and new friends?
Well, you get paranoid, that's what you get. Paranoid beyond belief.
You start parking at the back of supermarket car parks, and walking further than you've driven to get there in the first place. You start to wear your collar up and pulling your hat - or helmet - down.
I even took to leaving the house in a morning before sunrise, and going home once everyone had got themselves settled in front of the telly. So you also get scurvy for your 60k, due to natural light deprivation.
Have you any idea how weird a paranoid bloke looks fidgiting around in the dark with scabby arms?
But you know what? People will still want to be your friend, because you have a 5-litre, V10, 350bhp 'ride' on your drive that looks as though it has already been 'pimped'.
You can get to 60mph in 6.7seconds. Bear in mind Ford's hottest hatch, the Focus ST, does it fractionally quicker at 6.5seconds.
Oh, and if ever you should need to, you can (as VW did in the promotional campaign for the Touareg) pull a jumbo jet with your 850Nm of torque - which, incidentally, peaks at just 2,000rpm.
Point the thing in the right direction and floor it, and you could quite easily create a brand new mountain ridge in your wake.
All of this thrust comes from the fact the R50's diesel engine is the automotive equivalent of Battersea Power Station - and just as important to the motoring world as the now defunct coal-fired powerhouse was to wartime Britain when it was commissioned in 1939.
It is diamond diesel engines like this, on a limestone face of dreary petrol lumps, that sounds the death knoll for the latter.
Inside is a sea of leather and twiddly knobs. Knobs for raising and lowering the suspension, knobs for special gearing ratios, knobs for this, knobs for that.
There is even a bank of buttons in the rear, giving passengers' the right to set their own climate and even rear seat heaters.
You even get a huge bag-type thing that protrudes from the back seat centre arm rest, right into the front - presumably for gangsters to put their shot-guns on their way to the next bank job. VW claim it's for skis but there's not much call for those round our way.
The problem is though, said gang will easily be caught red-handed, thanks to the V10's penchant for fuel. You simply will not get more than 20mpg out of it. Especially if you were to venture anywhere near its 146mph top speed.
The only gripe I might have about the R50 is the 'blingy' wheels and flimsy tyres. Because the rubber is thinner than a granny's top lip, everytime you dare to tackle a bit of rough, the wheels go with an almighty - and at times quite sickening, considering the cost of the 21inch alloys - thud.
If you're going to take the R50 off-road, a new set of tyres would be essential.
All in all what we have here is a car that will sell in absolutely dozens. You're more likely to see a workman in a day-glo jacket on an M1 contraflow on a Sunday afternoon than you are an R50.
But if you do see one, get out of its way, or face the consequences.
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Weather for Worksop
Friday 10 February 2012
Today
Light snow
Temperature: -7 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: -3 C to -1 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: South
