VW Tiguan 1.4 TSI’s performance shows how far SUVs have come

The Citizen Motoring‘s long-term Volkswagen Tiguan 1.4 TSI Life has been happy biding its time in daily city traffic since its arrival two months ago. It has proved itself as a comfortable ride with enough space for the school run, trips to the office and stops at the shops.

But for our next instalment in living with this comfortable mid-sized family SUV, we’ve decided to mix things up a little.

We took our pure white Tiguan to the Gerotek testing facility for Road Test Editor Mark Jones to run it against the clock.

While we usually reserve the straight track activities for performance offerings, there is still a fair share of relevance in putting a volume seller to the test, especially when you compare its data against cars born with bigger engines.

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Credible results

The Tiguan Life is powered by a four-cylinder 1.4-litre turbocharged petrol engine. The mill is mated to six-speed DSG transmission.

While this blown four-pot was offered with 90 kW of power on previous generations, it is now solely available with 110 kW of power and 250 Nm of torque.

These numbers might dwarf against that of its 130 kW/380 Nm 2.0 TDI, 162 kW/350 Nm 2.0 TSI and 235 kW/400 Nm R siblings, but they might be a bit misleading on paper.

Mark managed a 0 to 100 km/h time of 9.7 seconds in the Tiguan Life, which was half a second more than VW’s claimed time of 9.2 seconds. While this is obviously slower than its fancier siblings, that’s not the point of this exercise.

ALSO READ: VW Tiguan TDI makes timely return to hit the sweet spot

VW Tiguan holds its own

When you start comparing it to the times of cars which set the standard not that long ago, you realise how far SUVs have come in a short space of time.

The first-generation BMW X3 in 2.0d guise, with a four-cylinder 2.0-litre turbodiesel mill which matched the Tiguan Life, with 110 kW to go with all of 330 Nm of torque, could only get to 100 km/h from a standstill in 11.87 seconds.

In the Tiguan stable, the first generation Audi Q5 2.0 TSFI’s 2.0-litre turbo petrol mill punched out all of 155 kW and 350 Nm, significantly more than its VW cousin of today. But, on the drag strip, the Q5 only beat the Tiguan by 0.19 seconds in going from 0 to 100 km/h in 9.51 seconds. And at the quarter mile (about 400m), there was nothing in it, with the Audi edging out the VW by 0.02 in a time of 19.06 seconds.

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Performance brigade

Compared to rare similarly sized SUVs with performance badges, the Tiguan Life doesn’t embarrass itself either.

The Ford Kuga 177 kW/340 Nm 2.0 ST Line clocked a 0 to 100 km/h time of 8.46 seconds and the 150 kW/300 Nm Hyundai Tucson Sport 1.6T took 8.61 seconds to get to 100 km/h.

To think that the Volkswagen Tiguan 1.4 TSI’s performance is on par with that of previous generation SUVs with some serious pedigree and not that far off more recent performance models is rather sobering. It is “only” an unobtrusive mommy wagon after all.