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Review: 2009 Volkswagen Tiguan, a deceptively expensive small SUV
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The VW Tiguan is a nice SUV that's as pricey as nicer ones.
You get what you pay for, the adage goes. Ergo, if you want a nice car, you’ve got to pay extra.
So goes the argument for Volkswagen’s new small SUV, the Tiguan, whose $23,200 base price is about $2,000 above the segment sales leaders from Honda and Toyota. The argument is that $2,000 isn’t all that much. This argument, while certainly not fundamentally flawed, is not applicable to the Tiguan.
It’s easy to see why consumers and reviewers alike have bought in to the myth that you get what you pay for in the Tiguan. It’s almost a luxury car compared to a Ford Escape or Toyota RAV4, with a smoother and quieter ride, tighter steering, and a more upscale interior ambiance. It’s a very pleasant car to drive.
But the price premium over other small SUVs is deceptively large. The base version has a manual transmission standard, which is great for those who can drive stick but an automatic $1,100 price bump for everyone else – the majority of the SUV market. The CR-V and RAV4 include automatics in their base price.
The base version also comes only in front wheel drive. The biggest advantage to buying an SUV over a passenger car (beyond the image, but I’ll argue about that in a future article) is the all-weather traction widely available in sport utes. If you want an all-wheel-drive Tiguan, you’re faced with a base price near $29,000. The RAV4 and CR-V come with all-wheel-drive for under $23,000.
(Vehicle pricing site TrueDelta.com estimates the price difference shrinks to around $3,500 when the Tiguan’s extra standard equipment is factored in, but if you didn’t want or need the extra goodies, you’re still stuck paying for them in the Volkswagen.)
But that greater-than-it-looks price difference alone doesn’t dispel the myth of the Tiguan. The Tiguan does arguably feel $3,500 more upscale than the CR-V or RAV4, or maybe even $6,000 if you’re feeling charitable. The Volkswagen has a turbocharged engine with smooth punch that those vehicles lack, it has more comfortable seats, and, as noted earlier, feels like a more solid car.
But the issue is that with a $29,000 base price, an AWD Tiguan isn’t really competing with the CR-V or RAV4 anymore. $29,000 isn’t the territory of the mainstream compact SUV, and adding options easily sends the Tiguan skyrocketing to $35,000 and beyond.
So perhaps you have decided that the Tiguan is worth the extra cost over a Toyota RAV4 and other compact SUVs for its added luxury. Just because you've reached that (fully legitimate, depending on your tastes) doesn’t make the Tiguan your best choice.
TrueDelta.com puts the Tiguan within a few hundred dollars of a comparably-equipped Nissan Murano, a midsize SUV with an even greater sense of sport and luxury than the Tiguan plus a significant bonus in interior space for passengers and cargo.
Unless the Tiguan’s tighter dimensions are a key strength to you for tight parking, its lack of an advantage in both price and gas mileage to the more substantial Murano and other midsize SUVs make it the loser as it finds itself competing against a higher class of SUV.
Or, of course, you could be like most buyers of small SUVs and find the relatively inexpensive CR-V and RAV4 and other more mainstream small SUVs perfectly pleasant and practical. That's okay, too.
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