Volkswagen T-Roc review 2021 It's like a Golf, just with more SUV
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00:00G'day, I'm Paul. So, you're in the market for a Golf, but you need to be seen in an SUV.
00:05Well, I reckon I might have the car for you. It is the Volkswagen T-Roc. Now, keep in mind,
00:10this has been out overseas in Europe for a couple of years now, but we finally have it
00:14here in Australia. We only get two variants, and this is the entry-level Sport variant.
00:18It's priced at just over $40,000, and it competes with cars like the Kia Seltos,
00:23the Mazda CX-30, the Ford Puma. There's actually heaps of competitors in this new segment. They're
00:28all basically bigger hatchbacks with more luxury features and a bit more price. Now,
00:33today we're going to do a detailed review of the T-Roc. If you do want to skip ahead to other parts
00:38of this review, you can use the time codes up on the screen there, or if you're on YouTube,
00:41just scroll down and use the chapters below. And if you haven't done so already, make sure you
00:45subscribe, hit the bell icon. It's going to tell you every single time we drive a car that's been
00:49out for a while. Let's talk exterior. You've got six colours to pick from, in all but white and
00:54red, a $600 extra. I love this colour here. It's like an off-white. I think there's a bit of pearl
01:00or something in that. It's a really nice-looking colour, and also a nice-looking car. You've got
01:04to remember that while this is sort of golf-sized, they've gone a little more adventurous with
01:09styling. Where the Golf is traditionally a bit conservative, unless you go to a GTI or a Golf R,
01:14this really takes it up a notch there. They've added this nice-looking 3D grille. You've got
01:19those LED headlights off to the side. A little bit of chrome there thrown at it as well, so you
01:24feel like it is premium and value for money when it comes to spending this kind of coin.
01:29So, in addition to those LED headlights, you've got indicators in this daytime running light down
01:34the bottom, and these are really cool because that whole section lights up when you flick the
01:37indicator on. They're not something that we normally see in this segment. Okay, let's talk
01:42wheels. The standard wheel is an 18-inch alloy wheel, but this has the Sound & Style package,
01:47which brings with it 19-inch alloy wheels. But in addition to those wheels, you can see here it's
01:51got a slightly low-profile tyre. It brings with it adaptive suspension, so that should, in theory,
01:56smooth out the ride and make this a little more compliant over bumpy roads and the type of roads
02:01that are really going to be affected by a low-profile tyre. It is a good-looking alloy
02:04wheel as well, with that sort of brushed chrome on the side, and then that shadow paint inside
02:10the wheel as well, plus a red brake caliper too. R-line badge here and on the front there,
02:15so this signifies that this is the sportier version of the T-Roc. Now, as part of this
02:19package, you can also option a panoramic glass roof. You get these nice-looking brushed aluminium
02:25roof rails, privacy glass. You've got these wheel arch protectors to make it look like it can go
02:31off-road, even though you're not really going to be doing any off-road driving. Now, in terms of
02:35dimensions, how big is this? Well, to put it into perspective, it's around 250mm shorter than a
02:40Tiguan, and it is also slightly shorter than a Golf, but it is wider and taller, so you are getting
02:46a slightly bigger proportion out on the road, but it's not monstrous. It's not the size of a
02:50mid-size SUV. It's quite a compact size, but still looks big out on the road, if that makes sense.
02:54Come around to the back. In addition to the LED headlights at the front, you get LED taillights,
02:59a 4Motion badge because this is all-wheel drive, T-Roc badge along the back there, and like most
03:04Volkswagens these days, a fold-out Volkswagen badge that doubles as the boot opener, and also
03:09the nook for the reverse camera. Look, in terms of design, I think they've really done well here,
03:14and when you think about the target demographic for this car, it's going to be probably a younger
03:17person, someone that wants to look a little stylish. I think this really nails the brief.
03:21Okay, so we are inside the T-Roc. Now, let's start with the key. This is what it looks like,
03:27so standard sort of looking Volkswagen key. Lock, unlock down the bottom, and then you have
03:32the boot button. It's a flip-out key, but it's a proximity key, so you're never really going to
03:36need to use that. On the back, you've got the Volkswagen logo. You just keep that in your
03:39pocket, grab the door handle, and then there's a start button just there to turn it over. Now,
03:43what about styling? Okay, so it looks nice. I think this is nicely presented. It is a bit
03:47of a sea of black, but it's nicely separated. The problem is the materials.
03:54It's just nasty throughout. It's really unimpressive in terms of the material they've
04:00used here, and this is similar to the Polo in the sense that they've just made it quite rugged,
04:04and I don't think a car like this needs to be rugged. A good example in this segment is the
04:08CX-30. It's a really high-end premium feeling interior, and I think this just misses the mark
04:13a little bit in that regard. So, what about the touch points? Well, that's all nice and firm,
04:17but over here, centre console is soft. The door rest is soft as well. Now, how soft is all this
04:22stuff? Well, we have a tool that will tell us. It's called a durometer. We've tested the surfaces
04:27around the car. If you want to see how this compares to other cars that we've tested,
04:30just use the link in the description below. Now, what about build quality?
04:34Actually, it feels really nice and solid. Everything is really well put together here,
04:38so big tick for build quality. Okay, let's move on to infotainment. You get an 8-inch
04:42Discover Media infotainment system. That's what Volkswagen calls it. Today, I'll give you a quick
04:46overview. We've already done a detailed review of this infotainment system. If you want to watch
04:51that, you can click up here, but let's have a look at this. So, this is your main radio screen. Now,
04:55you'll notice there, as my hand gets closer, it has a sensor that's able to detect that,
05:01and then it brings up extra menus down the bottom, and it makes everything a little bit
05:04larger because it knows that you're approaching. So, here you'll be able to find AM, FM, no DAB
05:09plus digital radio, which is disappointing. Also, no voice recognition. When you push that,
05:14it just tells you that Volkswagen has to activate it. So, it's a little disappointing that you don't
05:18get those features, but I'll show you a workaround in just a second. In the media menu, you have
05:23Bluetooth. You also have the ability to stream over the USB ports, an SD card slot or CD player,
05:30which is a little bit old school, but it's good that it actually has that feature in itself.
05:33You have inbuilt satellite navigation. Let's have a quick look at that. This system's actually not
05:37too bad. It's nice and quick, and then entering destinations is pretty straightforward.
05:41Now, in terms of smartphone mirroring, this is the way you get around the voice recognition issue
05:45because, with a long push of this, you can actually use your smartphone's voice recognition.
05:50So, I'll push and hold. Cancel.
05:55There's nothing to cancel.
05:57Thank you. So, now I'm using Siri instead of the car's inbuilt system. Now, on that Apple
06:01CarPlay, I'll show you what that looks like. Really nice looking integration. Super high
06:06resolution, and it takes up that entire screen. Nice and smooth as well. I'll show you what
06:11Android Auto looks like. Good looking integration there. All works fairly smoothly. We'll have a
06:15look at Maps. It all moves around nice and easily as well. Now, let's jump over to the screen ahead
06:20of the driver. This is Volkswagen's version of Virtual Cockpit. Now, you can tell that this is
06:25the slightly cheaper version of it because it's slightly pixelated. It's not super high resolution,
06:31and the other downside is that you can only have your map displayed either on the infotainment
06:35system or the Virtual Cockpit. So, right now, it's on the infotainment system, and I press this,
06:39and it switches it over to here, but you can supersize it by pressing the View button,
06:44and then you can switch between different context menus as well. So, it is good to see that this is
06:48standard because you don't really see any other cars in this segment with a high-end looking
06:53screen like that, but I think it is slightly behind the times in terms of other Virtual
06:57Cockpit-style systems. Now, what about speakers? You get a six-speaker sound system as standard,
07:02but the sound and style package that this car has fitted to it brings with it a 300-watt
07:06Beats audio system for those of you who like your Beats. In terms of connectivity, you've got two
07:12USB ports up the front here. One is for your smartphone connectivity, but you can use the
07:16other one for charging. Let's talk safety technology. So, you get autonomous emergency
07:20braking as standard. That also detects vulnerable road users. Just a bit of a mouthful. Blind spot
07:27monitoring built into that wing mirror. You get a lane departure warning, radar cruise control
07:32that's operated on the steering wheel. You also get semi-autonomous parking, rear cross-traffic
07:37alert, and it's also worth noting that the AEB system works in reverse as well. Now, in terms
07:42of the reverse camera, you get front and rear parking sensors. Let's have a look at that,
07:45see what the quality is like. Okay, here it is here. So, you can see your front and rear parking
07:49sensors on display there. You can see guidelines and a really decent quality as well, so you're not
07:54going to be running into anything accidentally. Let's talk about practicality, and we'll start
07:57with storage. Where are you going to put your phone? It easily lives down there. You can also
08:02slide it down the front there. It's not a wireless phone charger, but it sits neatly there. Bottle
08:07storage. You've got three different sized holes there, and then one inside the door with a little
08:13bit of room there, either side. Okay, center console. This slides forwards and backwards,
08:17which is pretty cool. That's a really weird shape, so I can fit the bottle in there. You can
08:24see there's not much room to close it, and it's so deep, but it's not not huge. Weird. Okay,
08:28glovebox. Look, it's reasonably sized and fit the bottle in there. That's where your CD player lives
08:33as well, and that closes up fairly nicely. In terms of comfort, you have automatic dual-zone
08:38climate control. There are heated seats here, but these are part of an optional package. And then,
08:43seat comfort. So this is the optional luxury package. You get these nice looking seats.
08:50They're pretty comfortable as well. They're manually adjustable for both the driver and
08:54passenger, but the seating position is pretty good. The steering wheel sits nicely in the hand.
08:59All this stuff's easy to reach as well, so big tick there for seating comfort as well.
09:04Okay, back seat. Look, it's not the world's most spacious second row, and you can see here that
09:10my knees are sort of firmly planted into that front seat. Keep in mind though that, I don't know,
09:15I'm 185 centimetres tall, and this seat is fairly far back, so this isn't terribly disastrous, but
09:22I do have heaps of toe room, and while headroom's good, you're probably going to be a little
09:26compromised if you are taller than me with that roof cutting in slightly. What features do you
09:31get in this second row? So that seat pattern continues here with the multi-colour. You get
09:36a centre armrest with two cup holders. Fits in there. They actually look like they're adjustable.
09:41Oh, that's clever. So if you've got a smaller cup like this, it won't actually go anywhere,
09:45so I like that feature. Then on top of that, you have a ski port to give you access to the boot,
09:51and then your bottle can also go in a door pocket down here with a little bit of room
09:56off to the side. You get air vents for the second row, 12 volt outlets down the bottom,
10:00but no USB charging ports back here with matte pockets. Now you have this panoramic roof,
10:05but that's not standard, that's part of an options package. I think it is worth ticking,
10:08because it kind of just makes the cabin feel a little airier and a bit bigger, so it's worth
10:14having a think about that when you are speccing your car, but look, aside from it being tight,
10:18it is a nice place to be seated. Okay, let's move on to cargo space. Now with the option pack,
10:23you get the powered tailgate, otherwise it's manual. You have just under 400 litres of cargo
10:28space here with the second row intact, and then it expands to a little over 1200 when you drop
10:34the second row. I'll show you how that works in a second, but before that, have a look under here,
10:37we have a space saver spare tyre and what looks like another giant subwoofer. I love the way that
10:43they utilise that space that you'd otherwise waste, and then you have a few other bits and
10:47pieces around the side like a jack, and I guess you could actually store some of your valuables
10:51in there as well. You've got hooks on the side here in case you need to tie anything down,
10:56but aside from that, it's a fairly sort of straightforward boot. Let me show you how this
11:00disappears, and then we will pop our luggage in. That jumps out of the way. Now, let's have a look
11:05at what it looks like with our luggage in here. I'll be keen to see whether we can actually fit
11:10our suitcase in. No dramas at all, that fits nicely. All right, let's drop that second row as well.
11:16This is how you're going to access your 1200 litres of cargo space. It's a fairly flat floor
11:24as well, and given it's an SUV, it has a high lip, so loading things in is going to be pretty
11:28straightforward, and then you can utilise all the space up to the first row. We've hit the road in
11:33the T-Roc, and it's powered by a 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine.
11:39It makes 140 kilowatts of power and 320 newton metres of torque. It's a pretty healthy amount
11:45for a small car like this. That means it's got a little bit of poke, a little bit of urgency.
11:49That's all mated to a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, and this uses a permanent all-wheel
11:54drive system. I think it's more an on-demand system, but it's always shuffling torque between
11:58the front and the rear axle to give you that optimum traction. It means that you get a little
12:02bit more sure-footedness than you would if this was strictly front-wheel drive only. Okay, dual-
12:07clutch transmission. This one's not the best one in the world for low speed, so it still feels quite
12:12elastic and can be a tiny bit jerky depending on the type of surface you're on. So if you're on an
12:16incline or something like that, it can be a little indecisive, but for the most part it's pretty good.
12:20Right now as we're cruising along, it's in seventh gear. If I sort of lay into it, it takes a little
12:26while to get up and moving, but for the most part it's responsive enough. Once it does find that gear
12:31it's all good to go from there. Okay, so Volkswagen claims a 0-100 figure of 7.2 seconds.
12:39Let's see if we can match that.
12:41That's pretty impressive. Let's talk fuel economy. Volkswagen claims a combined fuel economy of 7.2
12:55litres per 100km. Let's have a look at how we're doing. 9.2 litres per 100km. We've predominantly
13:02been doing city driving with a little stint of highway driving to get out here, so it is higher
13:06than claimed, but I'm okay with the number. It's not too far gone from the official figure.
13:10Let's talk about the drive mode. So you select them using this selector here. You can basically
13:14go from normal to off-road mode and then an individual off-road setting as well, plus an
13:19ice mode. But if you push in, you actually get presented with those on the screen, and then if
13:24you go to sport mode, immediately the gearbox goes into S. The suspension becomes firmer because
13:29remember this car has been optioned with the adaptive suspension, and then everything's a
13:34whole lot more responsive. When I get stuck into the throttle, it's bouncing back through the gears
13:37a whole lot quicker. If we jump back into the normal setting here, it is actually considerably
13:42firmer in sport mode. In normal mode though, it's quite compliant. It's really nice and comfortable
13:48despite the fact it's riding on 19-inch alloy wheels, so they've done a good job sorting the
13:52ride out. Volkswagen does kind of market this as the lifestyle vehicle, but with 158mm of ground
14:00clearance, you're not really going to be doing much off-roading, and that's obviously despite the
14:03off-road mode here. This is effectively just an adjustment of the stability control settings,
14:09allowing you to have a little bit more slip from those wheels. You can actually see how
14:12Volkswagen's off-road mode works by clicking up here to have a look at our Amarok review.
14:18We give you an example there of an ABS stop with and without off-road mode enabled on a
14:22gravel surface. Righto, let's talk handling. I'll pop this into sport mode. You've actually got
14:26paddle shifters as well, so you can manually select gears. Yeah, it's actually not too bad,
14:31so it sits nice and flat through the corners. There's plenty of traction there.
14:35I did feel that front left wheel slipping a little bit, but immediately you can feel it
14:40sending torque to the rear. It's quite responsive as well when you've got it locked into a gear, so
14:45look, this isn't a Golf GTI, but I reckon it's pretty close to being kind of like a warm hatch
14:50SUV. Let's talk road noise. We're doing about 80 kilometres an hour here on a fairly coarse
14:57chip road, and it is a little bit noisy inside the cabin. I think a lot of that has to do with
15:02those lower profile tyres and perhaps this platform just allowing a little bit too much
15:07road noise in. Look, it's not terrible, but it is noticeable as the speed picks up.
15:11Let's talk visibility. At the front, it's very easy to see. You've got this big window here,
15:16and you can clearly see the front corners of the car. The wing mirror is good. Visibility
15:20at the rear isn't fantastic. It's a very narrow envelope, so if you've got your mate sitting in
15:25that second row, it's going to be a little tricky to see past their heads, but for the most part,
15:29there aren't any major or glaring blind spots in the car. Okay, Volkswagen T-Roc. It is a great
15:34little package. If you're the target demographic for this car, which is probably going to be people
15:40younger than me or even people older than me that still are very cool, again, very much alike me,
15:45I think this could fit the bill. The only downsides to it are the scratchy surfaces inside
15:50the cabin. Our understanding is that there could be an update to this car coming in a year or two
15:54that will address some of those things, but if you can look beyond that, the interior is nicely
15:58presented, and it comes with plenty of features. The only other downside, though, is that the extra
16:02options that you get with the packages can be expensive, because you can't just get individual
16:06things. You have to get the whole package. So, keep that in mind when you're shopping,
16:09but with a low starting price and a lot of standard equipment outside of the options,
16:14I don't know, it doesn't really put a foot wrong. It's nice and punchy to drive,
16:17and puts a smile on your face, which is what is important about a car. So, let me know in the
16:21comments below, have you ordered one? What do you think about it? If you're from other parts
16:25of the world and you've had it around for a little bit longer, let us know your thoughts
16:29in the comments section below. If you did enjoy this video, I'd love it if you could share it,
16:32hit the subscribe button and also press like and the bell icon, that's going to tell you
16:36every single time we drive something new. But until next time, take it easy.