Aussie Motoring

by Stuart Livesey

VW unveiled the restyled Touareg at the New York Motor Show today and plans to have it in the showrooms by late in the northern spring.

The new Touareg has had a face lift that’s designed to blend it more into the VW family. Other changes to the body include a redesigned rear spoiler, 17 inch or 19 inch wheels (depending on the model), redesigned headlamps, darkened tail lights and four new exterior colour options.

Mechanically the Touareg comes with a new V6 and new V8 engines that significantly upgrade performance.

Other upgraded features include a new rollover sensor system, an enhanced tire pressure monitoring system standard on all models, rain brake support (that intermittently wipes the brake rotors when the windshiled wipers are in use) and an understeering control system.

The new Touareg will go on sale with a starting price of $US39,320. There’s no word yet on when the new Touareg will reach Australia.

Then you might wish you lived in the US

by Stuart Livesey

Volkswagen of America, Inc. are looking for the oldest and highest mileage diesel-powered Volkswagens in America. Interested owners have until May 31 to register their vehicles if they think that their VW diesel might be the record holder.

The oldest U.S. market diesel Volkswagen search is open to registered vehicles, still running on the road with their original engines. Volkswagen anticipates this will be a Rabbit, as 12,393 were sold in 1977.

The highest accumulated mileage diesel Volkswagen search is also open to registered vehicles, still running on the road with their original engines. The odometer reading must be substantiated with service records and/or logbook data.

“Since announcing this search, we’ve already heard from several diesel owners in the 300,000 to 400,000-mile range,” said Keith Price, public relations manager, Volkswagen of America, Inc.,

And for the two lucky winners there’s six months use of the V10 version of one of these:

2007 VW Touareg

VW Touareg continues to lead at the end of stage 6

The Race Touareg continues Volkswagen’s domination at the head of the leader board after six of the Dakar Rally’s 15 stages: The Spaniard Carlos Sainz and his French co-driver Michel Périn lead the Dakar Rally now for the fourth day in succession.

On the extremely fast stage from Tan Tan in Morocco to Zouérat in Mauritania, at 817 kilometres also the longest of the rally, Sainz recorded the fourth fastest time. Under these conditions the buggies were able to exploit their weight and power advantages granted to them by the regulations– the American Robby Gordon won from the Frenchman Jean-Louis Schlesser.

The third fastest time went to Giniel de Villiers in a Volkswagen Race Touareg. The South African and his German co-driver Dirk von Zitzewitz clawed back 25 seconds from the overall leader and now lie second 3:11 minutes behind Sainz.

The Portuguese-German duo Carlos Sousa/Andreas Schulz still hold third position in the Lagos Team Race Touareg 2, who recorded the sixth fastest stage time. Mark Miller/Ralph Pitchford (USA/South Africa) from the Volkswagen factory team completed the stage 12:38 minutes behind in ninth position and, in doing so, improved their overall position by two places to eighth on the tough stage, which saw several top teams tumble down the leader board.

VW is very happy

The 2007 Dakar Rally has just completed it’s third stage and VW must be feeling rather pleased at the moment. At the end of the day Volkswagen factory driver Carlos Sainz has taken the lead of the Dakar Rally. The Spaniard and his French co-driver Michel Périn took second place in the Volkswagen Race Touareg 2 on the third stage in Morocco from Nador to Er Rachidia.

The Volkswagen duo Mark Miller/Ralph Pitchford improved from seventh to fifth overall. The Finn Ari Vatanen recorded the eleventh best time with his Italian co-driver Fabrizia Pons on the 648 kilometre stage.

The Race Touareg remains unbeaten in this year’s running of the desert classic with three stage victories and as many days at the head of the leader board.

As a little bit of publicity for Aussie Motoring we have the URL emblazoned across the rear windscreen of our car and for some reason it seems to bring out the worst in some motorists. Some drivers seem to want to impress us by sitting glued to our tail on the highway - so tightly attached to us that you can’t even see their headlights in the rear vision mirror.

Others want to take us on at traffic lights and earlier this week one absolute tool forced their way up our left-hand side as we drove out of the narrow exit of a hospital carpark. That particular individual was driving a new VW Touareg V8 and at the time all I could think of was that she really needed to be driving ‘Stanley’ - a robotic vehicle built around the VW Touareg. Even robots have some thought of self-preservation and that was something the other driver lacked.

‘Stanley’ was the first robotic vehicle to ever complete the annual Grand Challenge run in the US by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. You can read more about the challenge here.

While I had seen photos of the Touareg before actually seeing one first-hand came as a bit of a surprise - even as I slammed on the brakes and waited for her to rip the front of our car off. In the photos I had see it looked to be around the size of a Subaru Forrester but in real life it’s a much larger.

Here in Australia the VW Touareg is available in five cylinder turbo diesel, V6 and V8 petrol and V10 diesel models. The V6 and five cylinder diesel both come in base or luxury versions and all models come with a range of options.

Prices start at at $69,900 for the base model V6 and five cyclinder diesel and peak at $142,050 for the fully optioned V10 diesel. Delivery charges, stamp duty and registration costs are all extra. That’s a lot of money to pay for something that comes with with one of those silly reduced-size spare tyres.

Unfortunately the only images on the VW Australia website are of the left hand drive model as sold in the US.

A full road test of the VW Touareg can be found here