Is the VW Tiguan a good buy?
What you need to know:
- The Tiguan comes with modern though practical design and style cues. The interior, although plasticky, is thoughtfully built to provide a spacious cabin with easy access and clever storage for cups, odd bits and pieces. It is a good car for a young family or professional.
Hello Paul, can you briefly review the 2008 Volkswagen Tiguan as a suitable car to drive in Uganda. Is it reliable and cost friendly? Mugenyi
Hello Mugenyi, the 2008 Volkswagen Tiguan and is a European cross over SUV (not as big as its other siblings such as the Touareg) with utilitarian styling inside out. The Tiguan comes with modern though practical design and style cues. The interior, although plasticky, is thoughtfully built to provide a spacious cabin with easy access and clever storage for cups, odd bits and pieces. It is a good car for a young family or professional.
The controls are easy to reach and use and its roomy passenger cabin space rivals other cars in its segment. However, its load space is quite small (cubic capacity 56.1). Overall build quality is good and robust enough to survive on most of our suburban roads, if you drive carefully. Surprisingly, the Tiguan’s 2.0 litre line four engine gives you a lively 200 horsepower, thanks to its turbo-charged power plant.
VW Tiguan’s Fsi engine is gentle on your wallet with the best highway fuel economy statistics at 26kms/litre. Car handling is reasonable, after all it has the ANCAPP five star international safety rating courtesy of a good design and passive safety features such as ABS brakes, electronic stability and supplementary restraints such as airbags. Nevertheless, do not get carried away to drive too fast, especially on the highway.
After sales support is from small independent parts dealers. Service parts are affordable although repair parts such as suspension or body components tend to be pricy or sometimes unavailable. It is easy to order or import what you cannot find. After 100,000kms, the costlier parts fixes such as the water pump/supercharger and suspension components will kick in. Fortunately, these parts are available.
Ensure you service the engine with superior fully synthetic 5W30 or 5W40 engine oil to protect the sensitive engine timing chain kit and variable valve train technology. Also, use fuel designed to clean and keep clean the dirt sensitive and intolerant FSI fuel system.
