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veryone is at it - that being the production of large, medium and small SUV’s - a horrible American acronym meaning Sport Utility Vehicle. SUV’s account for a whopping 21.2% of all UK cars sales last year, up 6.6% from 2009 and 13.5% from 2015 - that’s 1.8 million of them. The delicious irony of this is the main reason given is the high driving position, allowing a far better view out of the car. But - if we all buy them, as it seems, we will again all be at the same height! The Volkswagen T-Cross is a cute and chunky car and l quite like it. There are three variants - the S, SE and SEL, all with the normal varying amount of kit, with prices starting at £19,245 up to £23,070.
a 6-speed manual or a 7-speed twinclutch auto. The major effort here is to prevent the T-Cross from straying into the T-Roc territory and damaging sales. They are right, of course, and I really liked the T-Roc when I reviewed it for Platinum (www.platinumpublishing.co.uk/platinum-business-magazine/issues/46/).
and the extras such as roof rails, adaptive cruise control, variable-heigh boot floor and App-Connect infotainment system just about justifies the £1,810 lift over the base model.
The T-Cross is very well put together, drives well, is solid and pretty much fixed to the road and, as it is regarded as a cross-over, that being almost a car, it does not suffer from too much body roll in the corners thanks to its low(ish) centre of gravity, efficient chassis and excellent Germanic engineering.
Inside, it is well put together with plenty of room for 4 adults without too much need to fiddle with every knob you can find. The variable boot floor really maximises the boot space and uses every centimetre of the available space. The interior design layouts have never been startling in VW’s but there are Design Packs you can chose that liven it all up and for the price, you get a lot for your money. The seats are well plumped where they should be and everything is well put together.
The SE will likely be the most popular
On the road, the ride is reasonably
They have delivered me the 1-litre SE model and although as a dedicated petrol head, a 1-litre engine always fills me with horror, it does the job very well. It’s a turbocharged three-pot engine with two states of tune popping out either 113bhp or 95bhp - l have the 95bhp with a 5-speed manual, while the more powerful variant comes with
VW T-CROSS By Maarten Hoffmann To read all motoring reviews go to www.platinumpublishing.co.uk/features/motoring/
