Volkswagen Touareg 3.2 | Shed of the Week
Old-school, 237hp petrol VR6 SUV anyone? Better act fast...
Did you know that Volkswagen stopped making the Touareg earlier this year? In the UK you can still buy a new Black or Final Edition one from stock for between £72k and £84k, but when they’ve gone that’ll be the end of a long run that started back in 2002.
Right from launch, the Cayenne-chassis’d Touareg was a serious do-it-all Land Rover rival with an auto-locking centre diff, low range trans, and option boxes for a locking rear diff and active air suspension. They were great tow cars not just because of the chassis mechanicals but also because of the mad choice of engines on offer. The weediest one was a five-cylinder 2.5 diesel, but you could order your Touareg with a 4.2 petrol V8, a V10 5.0 diesel (one of which actually made it into SOTW) or a Phaeton 6.0 W12 petrol that generated the same amount of poke as a Cayenne Turbo.
Next to those, 237hp 3.2 VR6 petrols like our pre-facelift 2007 example here seemed a bit pointless at the time. As a result, not many 3.2s were shifted in the UK. Now they’ve become niche used cars with prices that sellers presumably think adequately reflect their rarity. Decent, reasonably low mileage 3.2s that aren’t ‘spares or repairs’ rarely pop up for under £6k. Indeed, some private sellers believe that their 3.2s are worth over £10k. Just as an aside, there were no V8s or V10 diesels on sale in the UK at the time of writing. The two 6.0 W12s that Shed found were both left-hookers, a 122,000-miler at £12k and a 74,000-miler at £20k.
Of course, advertised prices for vehicles like the old Touareg are one thing. Actual prices achieved might be quite another. Still, as the market stands, our decent, reasonably low mileage shed looks like pretty good value at £2,000. That two grand will only be the start of your financial adventure, mind. With 2.2 tonnes to shift the 3.2 will munch through consumables at a Mr Creosote-like rate. At an average of 20mpg, topping up the 100-litre/22-gallon tank will be a depressingly regular event, and you’ll be paying VED at £790pa because this car was first registered in December 2007 rather than in the cheaper pre-March 2006 registration period.
But in return for your impulse purchase you will get a capable, comfortable, roomy, well built and reasonably reliable 5-seater SUV that will ferry you and your brood around in a semi-superior, if expensive, manner. You’ll never accuse your 3.2 of face-melthing performance – think nine-second 0-60mph and a top speed of not much more than 120mph – but the VR6 motor will be smooth and there is enough room in the bay to quell the fear that will confront you on opening the bonnet of a tightly-packed big-engined Touareg. These monsters had sweating mechanics spending many an hour stripping away half of the ancillaries to get at what should have been easy-access service items.
Our shed is MOT’d until the end of next May, the certificate showing a couple of advisories for worn suspension bushes. Earlier history shows nothing untoward, just consumables. Unlike many contemporary Japanese offerings even gen-one Touaregs were quite well protected against corrosion, but propshaft bearings, like some of the women in Shed’s life, are given to banging. Electronic handbrakes started to arrive on cars generally in the early 2000s. Not long after that came the realisation that they were the answer to a question nobody had asked. Tyre pressure monitoring systems have been annoying people for much longer than that.
Both can give you grief on Touaregs, as can electrical problems generally. Water gets where you don’t want it, like in the footwells where some important ECUs lived. That was a VW flaw for a good while in the '00s. Shed remembers a Passat whose soggy footwell ECU played merry hell with the car’s comfort features. When he went to indicate, the windows would go down. When he tried to get the windows back up the wipers would kick off. We won’t tell you what pressing the horn button did to the postmistress in the passenger seat but she seemed to enjoy it.
There’s no mention of SE or Altitude in the ad. Shed can’t be bothered to check if the standard model had the pleated leathery interior. Whatever the answer to that may be, it looks inviting enough, even if something toxic might have sat on one of the rear seats at some point.
There we have it then, old-school SUV-ery from a different and some might say better age. Be aware that Shed has threatened to send booby prizes to those who insist on delighting us with their hilarious misspellings of the word Touareg...
I suspect the vw would be cheaper to run than an L322.
Of course if you don’t need the off road abilities, then clearly there are many much cheaper shed options, including the pcp payments on a Chinese ev etc.
I pinched it for a trip once got 24mpg driving like miss daisy.
He then being 24 at the time he had straight pipes fitted to it, .... it was rude.
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