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| Road Test Volkswagen Touareg R50 |
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SUV Of The Absurd
The R50 takes as its starting point the five-litre V10 turbo diesel Touareg, and then goes right over the top. In other Touaregs, the V10 produces an already sturdy maximum of 309bhp, but here it has been uprated to 346bhp (available, incidentally, at slightly lower revs than the standard engine's peak). The result is a slight increase in maximum speed and a 0.7-second reduction in the 0-62mph time to 6.7 seconds, which puts the R50 in the same ballpark as the Golf R32. For the not-quite-£4000 you pay over and above the price of a V10 Altitude TDI, you also get various body styling tweaks, 21" ten-spoke alloy wheels and sports suspension which reduces the ride height by 20mm. This does not make the R50 quite as much of a tarmac terrorist as you might imagine. It's certainly quick, but to get the best of the performance you have to opt for manual control of the standard six-speed Tiptronic automatic. If you don't, the R50 can feel slightly sluggish - which, considering its very considerable bulk, is none too surprising.
Equally understandably, it's not especially nimble through the bends, and realistically it never could have been. When you present the blokes in your suspension department with a tall, heavy, powerful car like this, they have to devote a large part of their cunning to making sure the thing stays on the road at all. The R50 may be nearly as quick in a straight line as the most powerful Golf, but it couldn't possibly be made to keep up with it through the corners.
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