Touran takes the road less travelled to carve a niche

A few years ago I bought a pair of those go-faster Puma racing drivers’ boots, with soles made to look like tyre treads. They are the commercial version of Formula One footwear, so obviously I was channelling my inner Fernando Alonso. Or something.

They re-emerged last week when I decided to give them some pedal time in the revamped Volkswagen Touran; but walking to the car I suddenly felt hopelessly overdressed, as though I had pitched up in black tie to play pin the tail on the donkey.

The initial cause of my embarrassment was an unabashed rear-window sticker – banner, more like – reading: “The New Touran. The 7 Seat Sports Car”. Clearly, someone in Volkswagen marketing was being wildly optimistic, or they had stolen half of the banner from another vehicle. (But hey, what did I know? More of that later.)

Now, my attitude to people carriers (there is no sneaking that seven-seat thing past me) is best described as militant, if not incendiary: they should all be blown up – preferably nuked – disfiguring town and country as they do and impairing visibility of everything else on the road for five miles. Boxy, ugly and a festering boil on wheels, your average people carrier looks about as aerodynamic as a mahogany wardrobe and half as fast.

Some hulking, some mean and squat, they gum up the roads at Sunday-driver speeds; safe to say then that my expectations languished somewhere south of Dixie. So of course the punchline to my prejudice was that the Touran turned out to be much more than I had given it credit for. Imagine my surprise.

It is not going to win many beauty contests, but most of those nasty, sharp people-carrier corners have been smoothed out on this charabanc, and anyway, practicality trumps looks in the multi-purpose vehicle galaxy (that band of the universe just below sport utility vehicle and above hatchback).

Then again, if you are going to be picky you could call the Touran a hatchback with headroom and an extra row of seats, which is what most mid-sized family runarounds really are. It is just that this one stacks up against BMW’s 2 Series Gran Tourer and the Ford S-Max, which is no faint praise. And ours rolled on 17-inch metallic grey Salvador alloy wheels.