Volkswagen has revealed the new T-Cross that will take on the Nissan Juke and Renault Captur in the compact crossover market – and says it will be a “truly credible” SUV.
The T-Cross sits beneath the T-Roc, Tiguan, Tiguan Allspace and Touareg in the firm’s range of SUVs.
It finally gives VW a model in the burgeoning supermini-sized-crossover market, a year after sister brand Seat launched the Arona.
Project manager Felix Kaschützke admitted VW was late to the segment but said that was “something we have done before”. He added: “Usually we are not the first in a segment but, when we come, we are the best.
"When customers hear there is a new small SUV from Volkswagen, they know we’ll get it right. We’ve put everything in this car that customers might expect.”
The T-Cross is based on the VW Group’s MQB A0 supermini platform, and shares many mechanical underpinnings with the Polo, which it will be built alongside at the firm’s Pamplona factory.
But while it shares a number of mechanical elements – including powertrains – with the supermini, the T-Cross has distinctive SUV styling. Kaschützke says that was a result of a focus on versatility to serve the target audience of small families.
“We needed to differentiate it [from the Polo] so customers could see the added benefits,” he said. “It can’t just be a reworked Polo: it has to be a truly credible car. People aren’t going to buy this car because it’s an SUV but because of the versatility it gives them: a higher driving viewpoint and extra space.”
The five-seat T-Cross is 4107mm long and 1558mm high, making it marginally bigger than the Polo (4053mm and 1461mm respectively). The wheelbase of the two cars is identical, the extra length coming from larger front and rear overhangs. The T-Cross is 127mm shorter than the T-Roc, which is broadly similar in size to a Golf.
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Door sills?
Will the door sills have protection 'kick-plates'?
People with shorter legs (children, since this is a family-intended car) will have to use the sill as a step to reach the 100mm higher seats.
Come to that, it is easier to sit in a higher chair but often more difficult to leave the higher chair with loss of balance or tentative toes seeking the ground in the dark (pavement lights as standard in the bottom of doors?)
Enjoying the available volume is good for families and people who carry sports equipment -say- but the height is not necessarily a good thing all round, in my humble view. This was the reason I eschewed the T-Roc when the time came to change py car last year.
Oh.
Is that it? The best a multi-billion dollar enterprise can come up with? Frankly it’s the laziest effort I’ve seen yet, textbook design by photocopier. Stand 200 metres away, is it a Tiguan, Toureg, T-Roc? What happened to creativity. In my opinion the amount of marketing hype spewed out by management is inversely proportional to the interest they have in the product. If this were a film it’d go straight to DVD and the bargain bin ones at that.
Design
Is it me or does the rear look very similar to the mk2 Ibiza?