General Comments:
I am in love with car. I just do not want to get out of the drivers seat. It is a shear pleasure to drive on any type of road.
Fuel economy is great, with a family of three plus full camping equipment a run from Swansea to West Wales approx 70 miles gave a return of nearly 60 mpg traveling between 60 / 70 mph. Around town I can easily get 40 mpg. However, It is on the unlisted country roads where you are constantly up and down the gear box you can expect low 30's.
The 6 speed gearbox is just great, the garage told me that to only use 6th on the motorways, but it is quite happy above 40mph in 6th. The acceleration in 2nd and 3rd is very good with 60mph being reached all to quickly. Speeds above the speed limit are easily reached, I have reached 100mph. Watch those speed cameras.
The interior is fantastic with a very clever seat design the rear seats fold away to give a boot space, whilst the middle row of seats are all individual and can be either moved forwards (SE model) the backs fold on-top of the seat and the whole seat can either be tilted forwards or even removed. The flexibility of the seating is great offering a large number of options.
The front seats are very comfortable with several adjustments. These being:
Forwards / backwards, Up/down, lumber support and back rest. This is perhaps one little niggle I have with the car. I am 6'1" my wife being only 4'11", it takes a lot of adjusting to get the seat just as you had it before.
From the drivers seat the car seems very large especially when all seven seats are occupied. The dash board is laid out well and well lit at night. At first I found it difficult to park as it has a tardis effect from the inside and feels as big as my works van. This is the first vehicle that I have driven that I cannot see the front of the bonnet, but you do get used to it very quickly.
If this car any faults I can only say that the hard plastic interior of the boot space scratches very easily. Also the absence of a spare wheel seems unnerving as I found out last Saturday when I had a flat, which the supplied compressor re-inflated successfully without using the supplied tyreweld.
We took some time in choosing this car and looked at the other cars in the same catergory, being Mazda 7, Vauxhall Zafferia, Citroen Percasso, Honda CRV. Each time we kept coming back to the Touran. I my opinion it was the right choice.
3rd Jan 2008, 03:47
The "steam" coming from the drivers side (RHD) wheel arch is NOT a reliability issue. All diesel Tourans are fitted with a Webasto auxilliary heater. The Webasto is a small diesel burner located under the right side wheel arch. The webasto heats the coolant water when the ambient temperature falls below 3oC, and vents diesel fumes and water vapour from the burner under the wheel arch (smells like paraffin. Without this feature the car would take a very long time to heat up and clear the windscreen, with the Webasto it is very quick indeed, and useful as the windscreens do mist up.
The tailgate issue is largely to do with the very good seal around the tailgate which takes time to compress and settle. Open a window and close the tailgate and you will see the difference when you slam the tailgate, as the car will not pressurise. Some early models did have defective tailgate handles which broke, these are more like an electrical switch than a mechanical handle.