VW Touareg V10 | Shed of the Week
Most unlikely contender ever?
Shed reckons like he’s done his bit for the environment over the last few weeks by bringing you a succession of cars that have not only been under the two grand limit but also under two litres in displacement. Now, like Mrs Shed undoing her straining whalebone corset at the end of the day, he’s ready to splurge out on this fully MOTed-up example of one of the most unlikely sheds ever, Volkswagen’s Touareg V10 TDI.
The 4.9-litre turbodiesel V10 Touareg was a Ferdinand Piech fancy, indulging the VW CEO’s famous love of in-your-face, over-the-top cars that he could boast about to his mates. Nowadays the talk is all about platforms maximising profits by accommodating a huge range of drivetrains and body layouts. The Touareg V10 was the opposite of that. When they were designing the Touareg VW’s engineers had no idea that the boss would waltz up and demand that they find a way to shoehorn this enormous lump into it. The reward for doing so was continued employment.
This one is an early 2007 facelift car, the first V10 having come out in 2002. It didn’t look like there were many differences between old and new, and visually at least there weren’t, but VW said they’d changed 2,300 parts in the braking, suspension, rollover safety and telling you how close you were to a tree departments. You got a sharp warning when you were getting too close to solid stuff on either side, a bit like when Shed accidentally invades Mrs Shed’s personal space, something that’s all to easy to do in their normal-sized house.
When it was new in 2007 the V10 cost £55k, equivalent to over £93,000 now. It weighed 2.6 tonnes and churned out 553lb ft of torque, both of which will be matched by many a 2025 EV, but you underestimate the magnitude of Piech’s tool at your peril. It’s hard to imagine a 5.0 litre diesel ever feeling overstressed on the public highway, even a potentially revvy 40-valve V10 one like this, but to spike that discussion before it even started VW made revving redundant by setting the V10’s 309hp peak power at 3,750rpm and its maximum torque at 2,000rpm.
Unsurprisingly, there was no manual gearbox option, just an Aisin-developed six-speed tiptronic auto doing its best not to explode. Top whack was 144mph with a 0-62mph time for the facelift car of 7.4 seconds. Other big 4x4s of the time like the Cayenne Turbo and Range Rover's supercharged V8 drank more fuel, but they were swigging petrol. The Touareg’s official combined consumption figure of 22.4mpg might well be the lowest ever for a production diesel. The V10 looks like it will chomp through your money in other ways too. Vehicle tax, courtesy of its flatulent 333g/km CO2 score, is in the top £735pa bracket.
Thing is though, you can quite easily hit 28-30mpg in one of these. One YT owner says he gets up to 36mpg on the motorway. The torque obviously helps by moving the car along with so little mechanical effort. It’s barely ticking over at motorway speeds. If you want even more relaxation you can chip it to over 600lb ft. Thrust was never really the issue: the limiting factor was the transmission. It gave you the ability to choose gears manually, but when it was in the wrong mode in Drive it was bowel-looseningly slow to respond to your frenzied throttle trampling when you were exiting a T-junction with a 40-tonne artic bearing down on you.
The Touareg looks almost compact now but it was considered huge in the early part of this century. Even after nearly 25 years of human evolution passengers will still enjoy bags of comfort and room, and their bags will enjoy bags of space. The back seats could be folded completely flat to provide a spacious and comfy area for two prone and consenting adults.
The self-levelling air suspension was internally adjustable for height. As we all know by now, air suspension on any car is going to break at some point. The high mileage here could be a saviour, with a fair possibility that at least one of the previous five owners will have spent money on the system. The ad is too AI to give us any useful info so you’ll need to ask for a squint at the paperwork to complement what you can learn from the MOT history. To help you in that regard Shed has used the special X-ray filter on his Amstrad to see through the dealer plates and discover the reg number, which is AE07 TYY.
If you can’t be bothered to look at that history on the Govt MOT site, Shed understands. He’s lazy too. Unfortunately it’s his job to do it, so he can say that it’s a pleasing sort of read. Between February 2023 and February 2024 a non-excessive oil leak upgraded itself to an excessive one, but that was cleared up at the time of the 2024 MOT and the last two passes have been advisory-free. If you do have an issue with the powertrain, accessing the parts you might need to get to won’t always be easy.
The trick is not to skimp on maintenance. Treated correctly, V10 Touaregs can be extremely durable. This one has done 188,000 miles, but some owners say they have done well over 400,000 miles. It drives better than you might think too, unburdened by many of the dulling effects of modern safety technology. It’s easy to place the car neatly on the road and the turning circle is remarkably tight for a vehicle of this size.
In case you’re wondering, here’s that video of it pulling a 155-tonne Boeing 747. Never accuse Shed of not being predictable.
They don't take a remap in one of these very well. Last time I looked a good used one was £2k. Could be more these days.
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