Volkswagen T-Cross 2019 Review

Baby boomer

Volkswagen may have missed the early years of the compact SUV revolution, allowing the Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, Nissan X-TRAIL, Subaru Forester and now the top-selling Mazda CX-5 a free ride for many years, but it’s making up for it now.

The third generation of the big Touareg arrives in Australia next year, the mid-size Tiguan has split into two lengths for its second generation, the all-new T-Roc small SUV will add spice and there’s also the prospect of the seven-seat Atlas crossover and, eventually, a big off-roader based on the next Amarok.

Now, however, the German car-maker is plugging the hole at the bottom end with the Volkswagen T-Cross, which is due on sale in Australia early next year.

Everybody assumed the T-Cross was going to be to the Polo what the T-Roc was to the Golf: a high-riding, slightly cooler version of a well-established, low-riding hatch.

But the Volkswagen T-Cross is not like that at all. It is marginally shorter than the T-Roc and has more of a grown-up demeanour than its Golf-based sibling.

If anything, it’s more like a junior Tiguan than either a taller Polo or a T-Roc lite.

And viewed in that light, it looks to be pretty darn good, if a little bit sensible and lacking the T-Roc’s visual and dynamic fizz.

The Volkswagen T-Cross brings some good, everyday tricks with it, though, not least of which is a rear seat with 100mm of sliding adjustment (via a system straight out of the Tiguan), which helps boost the luggage area from 385 litres to 455 litres. The idea is that it can be pushed forward to tote kids and back to accommodate taller adults.

The luggage area can be increased again, to 1281 litres, with the 60:40 rear seat folded down, and then the front passenger seat can also double over to help people carry longer stuff. The attention to the rear extends to air-vents of their very own and a pair of USB connectors.

Volkswagen admitted our prototypes were about 95 per cent close to production, and the key thing they’re trying to engineer out of the production T-Cross is the bracing bar behind the rear seats that prevents a true flat floor for luggage space when the seats are folded down.

 Under the bonnet

It’s a calming drive, rather than a scintillating one, with its 1.0-litre three-cylinder turbo-petrol engine delivering enough performance from its 85kW of power and 200Nm of torque, but only just.

It’s more enthusiastic than the paperwork suggests and it’s also a lot smoother than three-pots of old. It’s incredibly well isolated from the cabin and hardly a single tremor or rumble makes its way to the seat or the control surfaces.

The only hint that it’s not a traditional inline four comes at full throttle beyond about 4500rpm, when its charming offbeat warble arrives.

But it could never be confused for fast (and neither would anything else in the class, like the JUKE or the Hyundai Kona), with a 0-100km/h time of quite a lot, really.

Volkswagen isn’t yet saying exactly how many seconds this sort of thing might take, nor how heavy the T-Cross is, but it’s safe to suggest somewhere around nine or 10 seconds and somewhere around 1250-1350kg.

There’s an entry-level T-Cross with a turbocharged 70kW/160Nm three-cylinder engine (which will be even slower), but we only spent time in the 85kW/200Nm version and the 70kW/250Nm 1.6-litre turbo-diesel.

With the same 70kW motor fitted up front, the Polo (which oddly claims 15Nm more torque) meanders to 100km/h in 10.8 seconds, so the added mass of the T-Cross should add at least a second to that.

A 1.5-litre inline petrol four will also sit across the engine bay at some point, and is probably most likely for Australia. With 110kW of power and 250Nm of torque, it will comfortably slide beneath the 10-second barrier for 100km/h, and the diesel certainly will.

All T-Crosses will drive only the front wheels, with the base car using a five-speed manual, the 1.5-litre car using just a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission and the other two available with both (six-speed manual or seven-speed dual-clutch) cog-swappers.

Another key step (almost compulsory to meet the new WLTP emissions testing regime) is the addition of particulate filters for all four engines, not just the diesel.

The downside is that the T-Cross’s more budget status means it isn’t in line for electrification of any kind. No mild-hybrid, no plug-in hybrid, nothing.

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On the road

Stamping on the 85kW petrol engine’s throttle pedal at highway speeds is not a scary experience. The noise rises gently, the wind noise accumulates in a seemingly mysterious way and the speedo needle keeps climbing steadily, all without any discernible longitudinal acceleration.

There’s enough torque in the lower gears, though, and it flits around urban environments without ever feeling too slow.

The diesel was a better drive, even though it’s a less popular powertrain at this end of the market and Volkswagen’s engineers suggested its advantages in ride quality were probably just indicative of this particular car’s rotation in the development cycle.

Its torque is healthy enough to change the workload of the DSG transmission by maintaining gear a lot longer before it kicks down, and that strength shows up early and its noise and vibration levels are low and well isolated. In particular, it had far less bump-thump noise over square-edged road imperfections.

There’s never really a feeling that the Volkswagen T-Cross is missing out on anything by ignoring all-wheel drive, because the grip from the MQB-based chassis and suspension systems easily bests the engines’ ability to exceed it.

It runs most of the Polo’s suspension hardware, tuned for the higher and heavier T-Cross use, which means its wheel sizes range from 16 to 18 inches, rather than the larger offerings on the T-Roc.

It carries over the Polo (and Golf) feeling of being happiest to deliver in your day-to-day driving window, yet being utterly capable and competent for everything else you might want to do. It can corner with surprising curiosity, change direction with clarity of purpose and stop hard and straight.

It’s helped by a raft of driver-assistance systems, plucked directly from the Polo, which includes things like lane-departure systems, blind-spot detection, active cruise control, cross-traffic alerts and autonomous emergency braking.

Easy on the eye

It’s a pretty good looking thing for the class and a higher price point might have seen a full-width rear LED instead of the full-width reflector. It also has LED head and tail lights and plenty of the usual Volkswagen sharp creasing.

“We thought long and hard about how to give this car status and posture,” Volkswagen design boss Klaus Bischoff said. “We wanted to get something that offers the driver plenty of confidence.

“We give each of the SUVs their own distinct characters that are instantly identifiable as Volkswagens.

“The T-Roc is more sporty and coupe-like and it has bigger wheels and it’s more muscular. Here we wanted to fit the most pace and practicality as possible into the smallest possible footprint.”

That footprint includes being 4107mm long, which is just 13mm shy of the T-Roc but 54mm longer than the Polo, though its driver’s hip point for the seat is 10cm higher than it is in the Polo.

At 2563mm, the Volkswagen T-Cross wheelbase is a single millimetre off the Polo and just 32mm shy of the T-Roc, while it’s 1750mm wide and 1558mm high.

The interior will be a mix of all the stuff Volkswagen has already done well in the Polo and the T-Roc, but with those modules slotted into a different interior layout.

It uses a softer-feeling dash plastic than the cheap-feeling crud on the T-Roc, and while the standard dash is an analogue dual-dial set-up, there is an optional digital active info display and an 8.0-inch touch-screen infotainment unit at the same eye level.

There is no head-up display option, with Volkswagen insisting such things are financially unworkable at this end of the market.

How much is the 2019 Volkswagen T-Cross?
On sale: Early 2019
Price: From $25,000 (estimated)
Engine: 1.0-litre inline three-cylinder turbo-petrol
Output: 85kW/200Nm
Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch auto, front-drive
Fuel: TBC
CO2: TBC
Safety rating: TBC