Family tow car

[D7PNY]

Hi All,

Currently have a 2014 (2015 facelift) touareg R line and the wife has a touran r line.

Touareg is an absolute peach to tow with but the mpg as a daily is killing me so contemplating getting something better on fuel.

We have tried swapping cars but my wife does lots of short journeys and running around so although does a lot less miles than me, mpg drops considerably in the touareg so doesn't actually use much less fuel this way. This is why we actually bought her r line with the 1.5 petrol to suit her journeys.

If I take her car I get around 44mpg (indicated) but in the touareg this is more like 30-31mpg) indicated so I am going through a full tank of fuel a week.

We have a big twin axle 6 berth caravan and I also tow my caterham to/from track days so needs a good tow ability for the caravan.

There is also 5 of us albeit eldest (12) no longer in a car seat so opens up more 'normal' car options again in terms of back seat space. Touareg has plenty space or example.

I had considered a passat rline keeping the same theme but wasn't sure the increase in mpg day to day would be significant?

Any other suggestions?

Budget wise the Touareg is worth around 19k so in this ballpark with perhaps a small cost to change.

Cheers

Dave

[AyBee]

I think you'll struggle with the towing capacity given the track car and caravan if you downsize. What engine have you got in the Toerag? Is the Passat capable of towing your normal trailers?

[D7PNY]

AyBee said:

I think you'll struggle with the towing capacity given the track car and caravan if you downsize. What engine have you got in the Toerag? Is the Passat capable of towing your normal trailers?

The Touareg is 3.0 diesel so tows with ease (albeit mpg isnt great towing). Could cope with that but it's the day to day mpg that's killing me. I did look at buying a small run around to put the miles on as something that does 50-60mpg would probably pay for itself in around a year but that's providing nothing goes wrong with a £1500 old car which is somewhat of a gamble!

Caterham/trailer would be ok towed by most things as only probably a little over a tonne in total. It's the caravan that's more of a concern as obviously towing a house needs a bit more grunt! Passat rline 240 looks to have towing capacity high enough (just over 2 tonne) but I'm maybe trying to find something that doesn't exist in terms of ticking all the boxes.

[HocusPocus]

Drive your Caterham instead of the Toegag.

[D7PNY]

HocusPocus said:

Drive your Caterham instead of the Toegag.

I do take it in to work some days when weather nice. However, it is an r500 k series with sequential box so not the most relaxing commute (or most fuel efficient!haha)

[clockworks]

I had the same model Touareg a few years ago. I was getting a true 35mpg in mixed driving, just about scraped 40mpg on a decent run.

I've just sold a 2017 Kia Sportage 2.0 diesel 4x4 auto. Doing the same mix of driving, I was only getting about 6mpg more.

[D7PNY]

clockworks said:

I had the same model Touareg a few years ago. I was getting a true 35mpg in mixed driving, just about scraped 40mpg on a decent run.

I've just sold a 2017 Kia Sportage 2.0 diesel 4x4 auto. Doing the same mix of driving, I was only getting about 6mpg more.

My commute isn't the best for mpg as it is dual carriage way but numerous roundabouts on this so up and down the speed a lot. Even driving like miss daisy I can only creep it up to about 32-33mpg on the trip.

Can't get anything like 40mpg in mine on a longer run unfortunately. Was yours the adblue model?

[Easternlight]

Can't see that anything capable of towing a caravan of that size is going to be much different really.
Even if you can find something that does a few more MPG's is it really worth the effort and expense
of changing from a set up you are happy with?

Plus have you seen the state of the used car market! It's madness!

[clockworks]

D7PNY said:

My commute isn't the best for mpg as it is dual carriage way but numerous roundabouts on this so up and down the speed a lot. Even driving like miss daisy I can only creep it up to about 32-33mpg on the trip.

Can't get anything like 40mpg in mine on a longer run unfortunately. Was yours the adblue model?

Yes, adblue tank in the spare wheel well. 262bhp I think.

Does yours have the "coasting" feature in the menus? This allows the gearbox to drop into neutral when you take your foot off the throttle rolling up to roundabouts and junctions. I found it made quite a difference once you get used to it.

[georgeyboy12345]

As others have said, you won't find anything under £25k that matches your Touareg 3.0 V6 TDI's 3500 kg towing capacity and improves on fuel economy

Had a quick look on Autotrader and the quoted official mpg figures for your car are between 37 - 47, but on the Honest John real world mpg, they are averaging at only 30 mpg, so this agrees with what you are seeing.


These SUVs below might work, but they are probably all over budget, and still not that great on fuel

Audi Q7 3.0 TDI Quattro SE - Honest John 35 mpg real world
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202110068...


Range Rover Sport SD V6 HSE - Honest John 34 mpg real world
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202109097...


Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid S - Honest John 35 mpg real world
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202109287...

[clockworks]

georgeyboy12345 said:

As others have said, you won't find anything under £25k that matches your Touareg 3.0 V6 TDI's 3500 kg towing capacity and improves on fuel economy

Had a quick look on Autotrader and the quoted official mpg figures for your car are between 37 - 47, but on the Honest John real world mpg, they are averaging at only 30 mpg, so this agrees with what you are seeing.


These SUVs below might work, but they are probably all over budget, and still not that great on fuel

Audi Q7 3.0 TDI Quattro SE - Honest John 35 mpg real world
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202110068...


Range Rover Sport SD V6 HSE - Honest John 34 mpg real world
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202109097...


Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid S - Honest John 35 mpg real world
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202109287...

Q7 is basically the same car as the Touareg I think, so I'd be surprised if the fuel economy is any different in real life.

[JWH]

What's your annual commuting mileage?

[gman88667733]

The potential (small) gains in fuel economy would most likely be greatly out weighed by the cost to sell the current car and then buy a replacement IMO. I highly doubt anything that'll tow as well as your current car will do more than 35mpg average.

If you like your current car and it isn't much other than fuel, personally I think you are better off keeping it. At least until the car market has settled down a bit.

I changed my old Honda CRV because of fuel economy and ended up spending more then the fuel savings for multiple years on the new one, so it was pointless.

I suppose it is all perspective really... I'd be thrilled with 30mpg

[D7PNY]

JWH said:

What's your annual commuting mileage?

Around 13.5k commuting miles.

[D7PNY]

clockworks said:

Yes, adblue tank in the spare wheel well. 262bhp I think.

Does yours have the "coasting" feature in the menus? This allows the gearbox to drop into neutral when you take your foot off the throttle rolling up to roundabouts and junctions. I found it made quite a difference once you get used to it.

Yeah, the coasting option is turned on. Did an experiment this morning and basically sat at 60-65mpg instead of 70 and made a conscious effort to coast absolutely wherever possible. Managed to get it up to 34mpg on the trip. It wasn't a fun journey but perhaps show's I just need to suck it up as far as fuel consumption goes.

[stevemcs]

Your going to have to decide if you want decent mpg or a decent towcar, your not going to get both.

If you gain 10mpg then you will save less than £700 per year based on 13500 miles. So if you get 19k for the VW stick 2k to trade up its going to be 3 years before you get your money back.....

[AyBee]

At 44mpg (diesel), you'd be saving yourself £15/week (£800/year). If you were going to get 60mpg (diesel), you'd be saving £1,300 per year. Barely seems worth it for the hassle of changing cars (unlikely to be possible to get 60mpg from something capable of towing a twin-axle). Having another car for commuting mileage will cost you most of that in maintenance, tax and insurance so the actual saving will be much smaller.

[clockworks]

D7PNY said:

Yeah, the coasting option is turned on. Did an experiment this morning and basically sat at 60-65mpg instead of 70 and made a conscious effort to coast absolutely wherever possible. Managed to get it up to 34mpg on the trip. It wasn't a fun journey but perhaps show's I just need to suck it up as far as fuel consumption goes.

Have you checked the consumption brim to brim?

Have you made sure that the car's computer is set to imperial gallons, not US gallons?


I found that the fuel consumption was significantly worse if I used cruise control on anything other than flat terrain. Much more economical to gradually slow down a little going up hills, and speeding up again on the way down (or just letting gravity do its thing and coasting).

[PurpleTurtle]

D7PNY said:

JWH said:

What's your annual commuting mileage?

Around 13.5k commuting miles.

Assuming you are doing 5 days a week that's about 50-ish miles a day.

You could buy a cheap used supermini but you'd need to make a lot of fuel savings to justify the purchase cost/additional running costs/tax/insurance/servicing/consumables etc.

I'd take the view that you are doing a lot of time in the car, you want to be in a nice place, which I'm sure the Tuareg is, especially in bad weather. Maybe just suck up the current mpg and live with it?

(19mpg out of my "daily" E46 M3 here, mixed driving ... although Covid has put paid to much of my commuting, I'm pretty much permanently WFH now)

[D7PNY]

clockworks said:

Have you checked the consumption brim to brim?

Have you made sure that the car's computer is set to imperial gallons, not US gallons?


I found that the fuel consumption was significantly worse if I used cruise control on anything other than flat terrain. Much more economical to gradually slow down a little going up hills, and speeding up again on the way down (or just letting gravity do its thing and coasting).

I'll maybe double check the settings to be sure.

Agree on the cruise control, seems to drink fuel more using it. Mainly because it doesn't seem to use the coast feature then I thought.