Escape

Perfect for us - powerful comfy off roader for town and country - shame the Q7 couldnt tempt me off road

We bought the "Escape" version with adjustable suspension (since it was the only German SUV (as an alternative to the Q7) which has diff lock and hill descent control which we need for our place in Wales which is 1000 feet up and when it snows it really snows so you want these gizmos and snow tyres to get up and down the hills safely. We also use it for daily commutes and up and down the M4 so it has to tick all the SUV boxes. Also our area is inclined to flood so we needed something more than an upmaket shopping trolley. Add that a need to pull a trailer and 2 horses around narrow lanes and the obvious choice would have been a Disco - but I kept hearing bad things about reliability and fuel consumption and the cost compared to the Touareg was in another league so the Touareg sort of chose itself for us. We were both hankering after a Q7 (I wanted one so badly) but after much research could not find any evidence about their off road ability (other than a few dodgy looking youtube efforts) and again the sheer weight and length seemed to suggest frequent fill ups and that it was never really going to be much use on a hill farm. Plus I discovered you cant get snow chains for its 20 inch wheels!

The Touareg is doing 28mpg combined tootling around town and up and down hills etc. so far and much more on the M4 - our old A6 Allroad struggled to get to 25mpg.

As for driving pleasure it is fantastic and has far more power than you could ever need in day to day conditions - its a monster and with the 4WD and tonnes or torque it handles like a Golf Gti but is considerably faster off at the lights - you have to teach yourself to be very gentle with the throttle otherwise you are touching 80 in no time on any clear stretch of A road.

As for towing we lugged a couple of horses on an 80 miles round trip last weekend and you would barely know it was towing - effortless up and down hill - only the occasional downshift suggested there was nearly 3 tonnes on the back even on a steep hill. Luckily this one came with full leather and "all" the extras (apart from rear view camera) so the interior is plush and Germanic. Sound system not bad for standard model - I would have loved the DyneAudio.

The only downside is that the boot is not quite as big as it could be given its sheer size and since they have tried to stream line it with a sloping tailgate and narrow top that has cut a bit of space out which would have been useful.

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