Meet T-Roc, VW’s new baby SUV

The Golf has been the cornerstone of Volkswagen’s worldwide sales juggernaut since the 1970s, but it’s finally showing signs of slowing. Enter the T-Roc.

A compact crossover built to take the Golf’s interior size package and make it taller, the T-Roc is the third member of Volkswagen’s SUV family, positioned below the bigger new Tiguan, which will spawn the 2018 Tiguan Allspace, and the Touareg, which will be renewed next year.

At just over 250mm shorter than the Tiguan, the T-Roc sits on the same basic MQB chassis and electronic architecture, but will be clearly a class smaller and likely to start below $25,000 like key competitors such as the Mazda CX-3.

"The T-Roc sets a new benchmark in the booming SUV segment," said Volkswagen chairman, Dr Herbert Diess.

"With its functionality, dynamic handling and technology, the T-Roc embodies all good Volkswagen qualities and will give our SUV offensive added momentum."

As the third SUV off VW’s MQB architecture (the US-market Atlas/Teramont also uses it), the T-Roc will be sold with either front- or all-wheel drive and available with six engine options — three petrol and three diesel.

Jato Dynamics data indicates roughly 80 per cent of all compact crossovers are sold in either China or Europe, though they’re gaining favour in Australia and, less quickly, the US as well.

“We assume that over the next 10 years the annual global sales volume of this small SUV will grow from around 6.4 million units today to around 10.6 million units," said Jürgen Stackmann, Volkswagen’s board member for sales, marketing and aftersales.

Under the bonnet
The cheapest, front-drive T-Roc will run a 1.0-litre petrol engine with 85kW of power and 200Nm of torque, but the range will run through to Volkswagen’s still-new 110kW/250Nm 1.5-litre and 140kW/320Nm 2.0-litre TSI turbo-petrol engines.

The turbo-diesels begin with the 85kW/250Nm 1.6-litre, pass through a 110kW/340Nm 2.0-litre and top out at the most expensive T-Roc, powered by a 140kW/400Nm 2.0-litre.

Both the base petrol engine and the 1.5-litre four will come with front-wheel drive, while all-wheel drive (via Volkswagen’s 4MOTION system) will arrive attached to both the 1.5- and 2.0-litre units.

Likely ruling it out for Australia, the base T-Roc 1.0-litre only comes with a six-speed manual gearbox, while the front-drive 1.5-litre T-Roc uses either a six-speed manual or a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission.

Over in diesel-land, front-wheel drive is available in the base car, which only comes with a six-speed manual gearbox. Both the front- and all-wheel drive 2.0-litre turbos use both a six-speed manual gearbox or dual-clutch auto, while the most powerful diesel only comes with a dual-clutch unit.

There’s no official word on electrification yet, but a plug-in hybrid T-Roc, based around the Golf GTE powertrain, will arrive during its pre-facelift life cycle, but a fully battery-powered version is unlikely.

Under the skin
It’s based around the MQB, so you’d be expecting something similar to the Tiguan in its suspension layout, and you’d be right, with a four-link rear suspension and a multi-link front-end.

The five-seat T-Roc might be Golf-based, but it still offers 445 litres of luggage capacity and will arrive in either Sport or Style (with two-tone paintwork) model grades.

Adaptive chassis control, with active dampers, will be optional and it also gets the Golf GTI-derived progressive steering.

Sitting on a 2603mm wheelbase (78mm shorter than the Tiguan’s), it has far shorter front and rear overhangs than its big brother, with 174mm less metal and plastic ahead of the wheel centres than the Tiguan.

At 1819mm wide, it’s only 20mm narrower than the second-generation, mid-size crossover and, at 1573mm high, its roofline is 70mm lower. Its front track width is 1546mm and the rear is 5mm narrower and it all rides on standard 17-inch wheels and tyres.

The interior can be ordered with the fully digital 11.3-inch Active Info Display instrument cluster, though a pair of analogue gauges makes up the standard display.

While the biggest of the multimedia screens is an 8.0-inch touch-screen unit, a 6.5-inch version comes as standard on entry-level models.

The driver’s hip height is 572mm, while the rear seats are higher, at 618mm, to deliver stadium-style seating and better vision.

While the luggage space is officially 445 litres, the 60/40-split rear backrest can be folded to increase that to 1290 litres.

Gadgets galore
Volkswagen has worked hard on connectivity with the T-Roc, delivering a range of smartphone apps through its Car-Net system, which is controlled via either the infotainment system or the Active Info Display.

It uses App Connect, the system that integrates Mirrorlink, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, while Volkswagen also joined forces with Discover Media for a Guide and Inform service that includes POI searches, carpark availability and pricing, online traffic information and weather.

The front of the cabin also includes two USB ports inside the console’s storage box, beneath the climate-control panel, while there’s an optional inductive charging system for compatible phones. Volkswagen also turned to Apple’s Beats audio operation to tune an eight-channel 300-Watt sound system for the T-Roc’s interior.

There’s a dizzying array of electronic safety nets, too, ranging from pedestrian monitoring to automatic braking, from adaptive cruise control (which runs at up to 210km/h) to a parking assistant and from a lane-change alert system to the Level 2 autonomy of a traffic-jam assistant.

LED headlights front the top-spec versions of the T-Roc, giving the car a shallow-light look, while daytime running lights have moved to sit inside the front bumper.

Radically different while somehow retaining Volkswagen’s conservative, edgy styling cues, the T-Roc has something of a convoluted name, representing the ‘T’ words for the rest of the SUV range and ‘Roc’ for ‘Rock’, meaning, err, something.

“The T refers to the car’s successful front-runners, the Tiguan and Touareg, whose SUV DNA and strengths have been transferred to the new model – the high seating position, the robust qualities of the body and running gear and the all-wheel drive system that is included as standard for the top engines,” Volkswagen’s director of development, Dr Frank Welsch, said.

“The Roc in the name has been derived from the English 'Rock', which stands for the positioning of the T-Roc as a crossover that combines the dominance of an SUV with the agility of a compact hatchback model and the dynamism of the compact class.

“This car really rocks the segment – sometimes louder and sometimes more subdued, according to its specific options and colour combination. A new Volkswagen, which takes the brand and its owners into the next decade of mobility."