VW Touran Facelift (2010) announced

The 2010 VW Touran Facelift

The VW Touran gets a facelift for 2010 with a new family nose and back-end tweaks plus a revised range of engines. Goes on sale in September.

The Leipzig Motor Show starts this weekend, and we already know that a number of German car makers are going to debut new models. BMW are showing the new 5 Series Touring and Audi are going to show of the facelifted TT. And now we know that Volkswagen are going to treat us to a facelifted version of its people-carrying box with windows – the VW Touran.

Unlike the 2010 VW Sharan we saw launched at Geneva in February – which is an all-new version – this update to the Touran is just a bit of plastic surgery to make sure the Touran looks the same as the rest of the Volkswagen family.

Exterior changes amount to a new grill with a redesigned bumper and fresh lights at the front, and a new bumper and tailgate – together with some LEDs – out back. Interior changes amount to a new centre console and steering wheel and a bigger display with new backlighting.

The Touran now gets seven seats as standard, with the back row folding flat in to the floor to leave a decent load space. Drop all then seats and the Touran turns in to a small can with 1,913 litres of space. And talking of space, VW tell us there are now 39 storage spaces scattered round the inside of the Touran. I don’t know about you, but if I drove something with 39 storage spaces I’d have to buy a new pair of sunglasses every week. I’d never be able to find the pair I already had in the car.

The oily bits get played with too. The 1.4 litre petrol carries over but the Touran also gets a 1.2 litre option with 104bhp. On the diesel front there are a pair of 1.6 litre lumps with either 89bhp or 104bhp and a pair of 2.0 litres with 138bhp or 168bhp. Top end lumps can have DSG ‘boxes and bottom end can be had as Bluemotion eco-boxes.

The Touran also gets VW’s latest ParkAssist which does most of the parking for you. It will do the steering whilst you do the brakes and accelerator. I’ve only ever tried this on a Lexus, and it’s not perfect. Maybe it works OK now, but I have visions of school-run-mums in a fleet of Tourans being steered every which way but right by the ParkAssist.

The new Touran – no, that’s too strong. The facelifted 2010 VW Touran will be in showrooms in September with first customer cars in October. It looks like there will be a fairly hefty price hike to the starting price when VW announce pricing. But we’ll let you know.