If ever I have driven a car which emphasised my singleness, it’s the Tiguan All Space.
By my standards, this is an enormous car. The Tiguan can move five adults comfortably and an another two who hopefully like the smell of their own knees.
But this isn’t a car for moving adults. It’s a car for moving families.
Perhaps if you have a lot of children who need transporting, the Tiguan is sort of car you could get excited by. You might be marvelling at the ease in which you’ll be able to move your large, beautiful family from enriching activity to enriching activity.
If that’s the case, I’m happy for you. No, really. I am. No REALLY.
But the truth is, I am aggressively the wrong target market for this particular vehicle. And perhaps for that reason, the Tiguan failed to thrill me.
This is, of course, not the Tiguan’s fault. It does what it’s designed to do: move lots of people. It also completes that task in an entirety satisfactory manner. Sure, it has the sex appeal of an elbow, but if you’re seriously considering this car you probably don’t care too much about that. You’ve already done sex appeal and it lead to a small army of children who need to be transported.
Unfortunately (?), I don’t have a large clan of children. I also don’t have friends who are willing to lend me their offspring for car reviews. So I can’t speak to how easy it is to move toddlers in and out of the car, or whether those squishy rusk things are easy to vacuum up from the upholstery.
But, I can talk about the next thing a person with a large SUV does: it’s ability to handle a trip to Ikea.
When it comes to driving, The Tiguan feels a bit like a cruise ship. Now, depending on the kind of traveller you are, this could be interpreted as a compliment or an insult.
Much like it’s buoyant cousin, this car feels untroubled by choppy waters (or roads in this case). But while some people may appreciate its buttery smooth driving style, I couldn’t help but think it also felt a bit slow, and lumbering.
It’s not surprising, the Tiguan Allspace is a lot of car. It’s 4734mm long, 1688mm high and 1.7 metric tonnes.
Although I will concede this is a pretty standard size for a SUV these days. It’s only about 2% longer than the very popular 2023 Toyota Rav4 which can only seat 5-people. And it’s practically petite compared to the 7-seater Mazda CX-9 which is over 6% longer at 5057mm.
In fact, some might consider this car a little small if you’re regularly transporting more than five people.
If all the seats are in use, the Tiguan has a narrow boot. Enough, perhaps, for a couple of school bags or a small grocery shop. You couldn’t do a week-long holiday with everyone’s luggage and a pram, though. You’d have to have purchased and made use of the optional roof racks for that.
The back seats are also quite cramped. The middle row is easy enough to move forward to increase leg space, but anyone taller than a child would likely find the setup uncomfortable for extended periods of driving.
It’s easy to transform the boot space. If you pull a lever of the backmost seats, they fold down so snugly you wouldn’t guess they were there. A separate lever in the boot area will fold down the middle seating row, creating a large, mostly flat space. With the right kind of air mattress a person of average-height could sleep quite well in there, I thought.
So, how did the Tiguan Allspace handle Ikea?
Suffice to say, it was very easy to fit the lamps, bedsheets, bedside tables and other miscellanea into the Tiguan. The novelty of space was enough that I wish I had need for a larger piece of flatpack furniture.
Driving back from the industrial area I was grateful for the infotainment system. But while the Tiguan has two large screens, the interior is far less impressive than the extremely flashy 2023 Golf Life TSI which I drove just prior to reviewing this car.
The screen menus were convoluted, laggy and had far less resolution compared the the Golf. But all up, the interior felt a little old and stale. In a world where Apple and Tesla has set the standard for design and user experience, this model feels very in need of a comprehensive redesign. However, it was good to see that the basic temperature controls were still separate to the car’s screen-based menu – a complaint I had with the Golf.
But if safety and versatility are your primary concerns the Tiguan could be worth the compromise on tech, especially at the mid-range price point
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