One for you dieselheads!!
Today I helped a friend in the motor trade deliver a car to the house of a lovely and also wealthy old gentleman. It was for his carers to use, as they found his other car too big.. a Volkswagen Touareg (the off-roader sharing the platform of the Porsche Cayenne).
Anyway I chatted to one of his carers, who told me how she did 570,000 kms in her 1979 300D in her native South Africa.. then we talked a little about cars and the VW which turned out to be the 5.0 V10 303bhp 550 lb.ft diesel model, and his prior cars which were 'a Maserati' and an Alpina BMW. Then she went inside, came out and said the gentleman wished for me to drive his Touareg! My motor trader friend had told him about my Young Driver of the Year accolade...
Never one to refuse an offer, I agreed and got in - no key required, it unlocked when she walked up to it and I started it with a red-lit button. The interior is absolutely wonderful. This is where Mercedes should be looking for their examples. I shifted the 6-speed automatic into Drive and pulled away. And I have to say, the car drove nothing like a Land Cruiser or similar off roader. It just felt and drove just like an S-class, but where you sit up high.
The engine was interesting in that it made a huge variety of different sounds, none of them bad but none of them spine-tingling either. It didn't sound like a diesel, or like a petrol either. More like... a slightly evil train. Yes that's right. And that's how it drove too. There was no discernable lack of turbo at low revs, just LOTS of forward go
(enough for magazine tested 0-60 in 6.7 seconds) delivered through a lovely auto with imperceptible shifts, in a car that weighs 2.5 tons. It never pulled really hard at the top end however like a real sports car, but just felt like any time you wanted it could blast you away from anything with great traction and much faster than any smaller turbodiesel (which can seem rather limp when combined with an automatic), with even the handling to easily keep the speed up, if you are confident enough.
I still find it hard to believe that was a
VW, fitted with a V10 engine to make an ML55 AMG seem rather flaccid. Madness!
Russ