Volkswagen T-Roc 2018 Review

In a world of booming SUV growth, having a Tiguan, a bigger Tiguan (Allspace), a Touareg and Europe’s upcoming Polo-based T-Cross on the books isn’t enough for Volkswagen. It needed one off the Golf as well. Sitting just under the Tiguan in size and a world away in philosophy, the T-Roc might just turn out to be a masterstroke of positioning, feeling sharp, agile, practical and a lot of fun.

Sales of SUVs already outnumber passenger cars in Australia and today, 27 per cent of the cars Europeans buy are SUVs. Within five years, that’s expected to rise to 34 per cent and you’d better believe that Volkswagen wants a chunk of that.

Europe is Volkswagen’s engine room. It’s the biggest car-maker there by quite some margin and it’s not looking to get any smaller than Dieselgate made it, so here comes the T-Roc.

Built off the Golf’s core architecture, the T-Roc is sharp where the more family-oriented Tiguan is dully competent, agile where its big brother is stolid and it pays almost nothing in terms of ride quality.

Its interior is feisty and fun, though the eggshell-hard dashboard plastic is both unbecoming and not very Volkswagen in the way it sounds and feels.

There’s plenty of interior tech, including a new digital instrument cluster that swaps jobs back and forth with the 8.0-inch infotainment touch-screen in the dash.

Fun to drive
But the biggest surprise is the way it drives. A Tiguan lets you know in the first metres of a drive that it’s solid and stable and it will see you right in comfort. Even the Golf goes down that road a bit. A T-Roc isn’t like that at all.

It’s an SUV with almost warm-hatch like levels of grip and sportiness on the road and it feeds back to you that it wants you to have fun in it, at every opportunity.

One key has been the use of the Group’s MQB modular architecture to lower development cost and time, but the second has been that Volkswagen has taken drastic steps to give it clear separation from an otherwise-vulnerable, similar-sized Golf.

That’s where the sporty nature comes in, and it comes in right down to its 17-inch boots. It feels alive, vibrant and agile. It changes direction with an enthusiasm that is frankly stunning from this sort of machine and it carries about 50 per cent more speed through corners than is ever likely to be necessary.

It even whips through quick direction changes with rock-solid body control and none of that up-across-over feel from the rear-end bodywork on most SUVs or crossovers. It just hunkers down, transfers its weight while keeping the body flat and punches through.

Mid-corner bumps don’t threaten the composure, either, and it rides them ridiculously well whenever you’re hustling through the bends.

There are three damping modes and, as usual, you’ll only need Comfort for exceedingly gnarly road surfaces, you’ll only need Sport to briefly impress somebody (though it doesn’t ride poorly) and you’ll spend most of your T-Roc’s life in the default Auto setting. Because it’s that clever.

The variable-ratio steering gets quicker as the lock stops approach and it turns the tighter winding roads into a cheerful, composed blast, especially if you compromise the ride with the biggest 225/40 R19 rubber.

Its rock-solid body construction helps with the handling, too, and the all-wheel drive feels like it effortlessly gets the power to the road. The cheaper, front-drive version doesn’t struggle much, either, though it’s dealing with less power.

It’s almost a GTI for the crossover category. It’s that good.

There’s a small price to pay for that in its firmness over bumps at low speed, but it’s not significantly firmer than a Golf, and that’s damned near the best thing in the compact class.

Under bonnet
Its three engines (one of them a diesel) all run turbochargers, beginning with the cheerful little 1.0-litre three-cylinder unit, complete with direct injection, that inhabits the front-wheel drive poverty pack.

The thing manages 85kW of power and 200Nm of torque, but there aren’t likely to be many of them driven on boats leaving Europe, so forget we mentioned it.

The new 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol motor (new in the Golf 7.5 for Europe) is also available,(though Volkswagen didn’t have one on the launch drive and similarly hid the 1.6-litre TDI.

Of more interest to the scorecards will be the 1968cc turbo-diesel, with 110kW of power and, from 1750rpm, 340Nm of torque.

Enough to punch to 100km/h in 8.4 seconds, it’s swift, frugal and smooth enough to camouflage itself as a mediocre example of four-cylinder petrol engineering.

It’s strong at all parts of its rev range and its vibrations are superbly isolated from the cabin, even when you can hear it straining under load. With 133g/km of CO2 and an NEDC combined cycle of 5.1L/100km, it’s also the most frugal.

Our most likely engine
But it’s the 140kW 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine that stands out as the one that most suits the T-Roc’s chassis character. The detuned Golf GTI engine is lighter over the front-end than the diesel and it’s also a bit tastier, spins a lot sweeter and is free with its punchy fun.

The engine mounts and cradle have no issues sponging up the diesel’s vibrations, so it laughs at the petrol four’s wobulations and refused to pass them on.

It’s a strong engine, mated to a strong seven-speed dual-clutch transmission that flicks through shifts with unimpeachable smoothness (except when it brings the artificial jolts in the Sport mode).

It’s a great small engine, full of torque (its 320Nm hits at 1500rpm), free of tremors and quick to respond to the throttle.

There are some hints to old-style driving here, with the Sport mode speeding up the throttle response and the paddle shifts giving the driver the feeling of control, but the car is now smart enough to do both jobs at least as well, and as timely, as you can.

There’s also a round controller to select different all-wheel drive modes for different surfaces, which seemed to work well for our limited off-road attacks, and it combines with an electric parking brake.

The driving package runs the now-normal suite of Volkswagen safety tech, from the cross-parking warning to pedestrian-detection to active cruise control to a self-parking system.

Crisp look, too
That all gives the T-Roc a dose of inherent character that makes its two-tone paint scheme, flashier colours (though not green, oddly) and bright interior trims feel authentic, rather than a tack-on attempt at individualism. The white-on-blue, which looks naff in pictures, actually works extremely well in natural light.

Its design is a fresh start for Volkswagen and the wide grille and crisply curved wheel-arches are a clear departure from the conservative norms of cars like the Passat and the Tiguan.

Through it all, it delivers a clear crossover look, while shying away from looking or feeling overtly tall, and it neatly combines straight lines, sharp edges and softer curves in a concert of design precision.

It’s the same inside, where the T-Roc delivers on every Volkswagen brand promise except the use of top-end materials in the eggshell-feeling dashboard.

The seats are higher quality than the dash, fortunately, and the touch-screen works beautifully, linking MirrorLink and Apple CarPlay with an inductive charging pad and a healthy rear seat shape and space.

The car’s interior is big enough for a young family, and includes a powered liftback, and is a superbly rounded machine.

And, to keep the Golf in its position of pre-eminence inside Volkswagen, it will only build 200,000 of them a year in Europe and another 250,000 a year in China.

And they’ll shift every single one.

2018 Volkswagen T-Roc pricing and specifications:
Price: TBC (it might take some time...)
On sale: By early 2019
Engine: 2.0-litre turbo-petrol four-cylinder
Output: 140kW/320Nm
Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch, all-wheel drive
Fuel: 6.7L/100km
CO2: 152g/km
Safety rating: TBC