New Volkswagen Touareg strikes hitch

One of the niftiest gadgets in the new Volkswagen Touareg — the German car-maker’s new SUV flagship — will not make the trip to Australia.

It’s a built-in tow hitch on the third-generation Volkswagen Touareg — due in local showrooms next April — that extends for action using just a single switch in the rear compartment.

It has failed tough safety requirements in Canberra because it does not include mountings for the emergency chains fitted to most caravans and trailers.

“It’s definitely not coming — definitely not,” the product manager at Volkswagen Group Australia, Glenn Reid, told carsales.com.au during a press preview of the new Volkswagen Touareg in Morocco.

“Why can’t we get it? I’ve been told that it doesn’t meet the Australian Design Rule regulations,” he said.

It’s not the only new technology that will be missing when the MkIII Volkswagen Touareg lands here in the first half of next year.

The big new five-seat luxury SUV will not come with road sign recognition or soft-closing doors either.

Reid says the sign-scanning system will not currently work here because of the wide variation in the sign designs and mountings used in Australia.

“It cannot recognise the signs. So we won’t take it now,” he said.

“We are working on it, but at the moment we don’t have specific timing.”

BMW Australia spent more than a year on special local calibration of its road-sign system using a team of German experts, more than five years after it was first fitted to cars in Germany.

However, Mazda was able to shortcut the development and testing time for the system it fits to a number of its models including the top-selling CX-5.

On the door side, Reid says the fear of injuring children is the reason the new Touareg will not be sold here with doors that use small electric motors to deliver soft-close operation, as employed by a wide range of luxury brands.

“They don’t have pinch protection,” he said.

“We’ve seen for other brands that are not specifically Volkswagen Group, and in other markets, that there are issues with people hurting themselves in the doors.”

But, after seeing the system operating in Morocco and despite the fear of lawsuits that have hit other brands in the USA, Reid says there could be a change of heart.

“They only operate over a very short distance. It would be difficult to stick a finger into the gap. We might have another look at it.”

On the towing front, Reid says the bar and ball on the back of the Touareg has been available for some time on the outgoing model but there has been no change in Germany and that means no change for Australia.

“I’ve been working on it for some time. As far as I know we’re the only country that has that requirement,” he says.

“It doesn’t have the two mounting points for safety chains and that’s it. I don’t think there will be any change to the ADRs.”

The 3.5-tonne towing capacity of the Touareg will not be affected by the loss of the onboard towbar system and Reid also says there will be plenty of other luxury and technology in the car to offset the loss of soft-close doors and road sign recognition.

“The new Touareg is very highly specified. There is a lot of extra equipment beyond what we have in the current car,” he said.