2022 Volkswagen Taos SE: Test Drive Review

Hey my dear friends, Sam Haymart with Test Driven TV. Today we are looking at the all-new 2022 Volkswagen Taos. This is the new compact crossover SUV that fits below the very popular Volkswagen Tiguan. So I'm going to show it to you inside now. We're going to take it for a test drive and then I'm going to tell you what I really think. What we have here today my friends is a mid-level SE trim grade front-wheel drive 2022 Volkswagen Taos. As tested we're at $28,000 and some change. The base model starting out at around $23,000. If you go to the SEL you're up into the $30,000. And Volkswagen keeps it very simple with their trim grades. At this point there are three of them to choose from. When it comes to looking at what this is, Volkswagen doesn't offer the Golf hatchback anymore unless you go to the high performance GTI. So this is a little bit bigger than the Golf, a little bit longer, quite a bit taller, really sort of serves that space in the showroom that it used to. Now compared to the Tiguan this is seven inches shorter in wheelbase and 11 inches shorter in length and just a couple inches shorter in overall height. So you're going to find it a lot easier to park around town, a little more nimble and as we get out on the drive it definitely feels a lot lighter. Looking at the styling, I think Volkswagen's done a nice job here at sort of updating their Volkswagen look. Volkswagens, I've been around them forever. I've owned a lot of them. They tend to be very predictable in their styling and lately they've become, well, a little more bland than I'd like to see. So here they spiced it up just a little bit with some contouring in the grille and some nice materials. Nice gloss black applique across the front that gives it a more upscale appearance. LED headlights on here and the wheels on the SE trim grade are 18 inch alloys. Coming down the side, as expected, you've got the black plastic cladding over the fender lips and lower rockers and at the rear, the first thing I'll point out is that this hatch is not a power hatch on the SE trim grade but you've got a beautiful built-in spoiler, LED taillights and getting down to the lower fascia, I have to mention it, I hate to, but Volkswagen has applied their fake exhaust tips to this car. Volkswagen loves those things right now. They do look very attractive but they're not real. They don't do anything. They're just decorations. When you do step back and look at the larger picture, I think this is a very handsome vehicle that's got some nice details on it that for this price range does have a bit of an upscale appeal. Sitting behind the wheel of the new Volkswagen Taos, you're going to find a very traditional Volkswagen cockpit type layout but there's a few untraditional things here in terms of its design and materials. This is a two-tone interior which I find very attractive but look at the blue trim on the dash. This is something unexpected and it has a nice satin finish that I actually kind of like. It's a little bit different in the marketplace right now. It's not just another black or gray interior. In the SE, this has a digital instrument cluster in the center. It's not the full digital cockpit that you're going to find up in the SEL model but it is a good size screen and then there's a digital temperature gauge and a digital fuel gauge on either side. You can customize some of the information sets on that instrument cluster and the steering wheel of course has fully functional buttons for not only the controls there but some of your infotainment. The center stack very simply laid out. You've got the touchscreen infotainment system at the top and down below that HVAC controls. These are very traditional basic controls, not full climate control. The lower center console's got a nice good size cubby for your phone and there is a wireless charger on this trim grade. Also USB ports and a 12-volt power port down there for charging. Traditional shifter. I love that. Few buttons on either side. Electric parking brake and the button for the auto start stop system. Cup holders down low so that you can have big cups here without getting in your way. And storage in the center console is not the biggest in the class. This is just slightly smaller than a square Kleenex box but it is deep enough that you can get a lot of things in there. These seats are upholstered with something a little bit different that I found in other Volkswagens. They're not cloth and they're not leatherette. These are what they call Cloudtex. Now there is a bit of a cloth material on the side bolsters but in the center you have what looks like a suede but if you feel it, it actually has more of a texture of like a neoprene wetsuit. It's very rubbery. It's very not absorbent I wouldn't say. And so it's probably a good material if you have an active lifestyle. If you're getting in here wet, sweaty. If you're maybe dirty. It's not something that looks like it's going to stain very easily but I will say that in the heat here in Arizona this week I have found that I get a little bit sticky and a little bit sweaty sitting in them. The seats though are quite comfortable. I have power seat here on the driver's side and it is manually adjustable for the passenger. Just because this is a compact crossover doesn't mean the rear seat is a penalty box. Look at this. Look at all the space that I've got back here. These seats are set for my height about 5'8", 5'9", depending on whether I'm wearing shoes or boots. And I've got lots of leg room and so I could have a really tall person sitting here pushing that seat back and I'd still be doing fine. Seating height as you can see, nice and high and I still have a lot of headroom above my head. Therefore I'm sitting in a position that's very comfortable and these seats have a lot of side bolstering so I have a lot of support as well. Amenities back here pretty good. There are vents in the back. Not all compacts in this class have that. There is a fold-down armrest here with cup holders in it and a nice little pass-through feature which allows you to put larger things in here like skis for instance and maintain the ability to have a couple of passengers. But as you'd expect you can also fold these seats down in a 60-40 split. Now if you get the all-wheel drive model you do lose a little bit of extra cargo space probably for the packaging for the all-wheel drive or maybe a larger spare. I'm not exactly sure why but it's about four to five less cubic feet. Underneath that floor is a spare tire. Very important here in the SUV class I think. Now it is a temporary use spare but it'll get you back to self-service if you cut a tire open on a rock or something like that. Always a bonus. Overall I'm very impressed with this interior. Yes there's a lot of hard plastic. This is a Volkswagen. That's typical of the brand but the quality of the switch gear is very good and the design, the layout, the comfort, the livability is very good. This interior is four and a half out of five stars. When it comes to the infotainment system this is Volkswagen's mid-grade system. It doesn't have the full Beats audio like you're going to find in the SEL but it is a more featured system than you're going to find in the base S model. It has full swipe capability. It allows you to just sort of get right up close and it'll actually react to you. There it just did it and it is of course a touchscreen. Sirius XM. It has the wireless app connect which in my case allows me to use Android Auto wirelessly. It's got a lot of feature content in that way. It does have a pretty good audio sound. The one thing I would point out is because it has a very glossy surface instead of a satin, glare does tend to be an issue. Using it is actually pretty easy. The menus are very well laid out and once you learn them they're pretty good. There's hard controls, a few touch sensitive controls on either side for the most used things. A few curiosities though. There's what looks like a tuning knob over here that during my week with it I could not find anything that it does. It doesn't tune. It's like a dummy knob. There has to be some function for it but I didn't find it. Another little quirk it has that it's sometimes slow to boot up and actually start running. A lot of times when I start the car it's just blank and it says waiting on there. In some cases up to three to five minutes before it actually started showing me the stations and the audio came on. So I don't know if that's a this car thing or if that's just part of the system thing. There was one time that I actually had to shut down the car and restart it for the audio system to actually work. So that's something Volkswagen I think needs to work on with the speed of their computer system. But overall getting past those things I found this system to be pretty competitive out there in the market. It gets four out of five stars. Alright my friends now let's take a drive in this thing. So the first question I always like to ask is how does it go? Hmm got a decent sound. And 60. Okay so the first thing you might have noticed there is it's a little slow to respond when you mash the pedal. And that's not necessarily turbo lag that's just drive by wire computer throttle lag. Once the engine gets the hint from the computer that you want to go this thing spools up and goes pretty good. Now what's under the hood here is 1.5 liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine. It has 158 horsepower and 184 pound-feet of torque. In the front-wheel drive model it is mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission. Now if you step up to all-wheel drive you'll get a seven-speed DSG automatic transmission. Quite a big difference in how each one of those two drives. So if you're going back and forth between which one make sure you drive them both to get the full impression. Now this is equipped with an auto start stop system which shuts the engine off when you come to a stop. When you let off the gas it starts again and your air conditioning gets cold again. So I don't really like these systems very much if you watch my videos. So I almost always turn them off. I left it on here just for the sake of the video. When it comes to fuel economy this is rated at 28 city, 36 highway and 31 combined. Now in my week with it I got 27. So not quite up to even the city rating in my overall combined rating, a little bit less. But when it comes to overall livability and what this powertrain is like to live with, a little bit better than some of the buttock cycle engines I've gotten in past Volkswagens which in this case is a modified Miller cycle in combustion which tends to make engines a little bit rougher and less refined. They seem to iron that out a little bit here. The transmission here, the 8-speed, another item in past Volkswagens. I haven't been too impressed with it but here again they seem to have been working with the software to make this overall package slightly more refined although it still does tend to jerk a little bit around town at slower speeds when you're mostly when you're taking off in that first and second gear. And the other part of this transmission and the software equation is the fact that like you saw when I took off back there, if you're mashing the throttle and you're trying to pull out in traffic, make sure you give yourself a little bit of lead time because this takes a second to get the hint and go. That said, this is the powertrain that I did find for the most part pleasing. It gets 4 out of 5 stars. When it comes to ride and handling this is an area the Volkswagen usually shines very well. They've always had their own special feel, this German-engineered sort of aura feel to the steering, the way they react to your inputs when you throw them into a curve, when you go around a corner. They always handle pretty well and this is no exception. And actually the fact that this is a smaller, more nimble SUV than the Tiguan, I find it much more enjoyable to drive than the last Tiguan I tested. It's just easier to toss around, it's easier to deal with in traffic, it's more manageable, and it just feels more fun. It's got a nice solid chassis, there aren't any rattles. Going over speed bumps and speed humps in my neighborhood I didn't get any thunking or clunking. I was very impressed with the overall refinement of this chassis in spite of the fact that on the front-wheel drive this has sort of a low-tech twist beam axle instead of the multi-link suspension you'll find on the all-wheel drive model. At speed out on the highway I found this to be very stable, very little wind noise, and for the most part it's pretty quiet. The ride itself is pretty firm but I found that it has enough compliance every day to be comfortable. So there you go, I'm very impressed with this chassis. It gets five out of five stars. All right my friends, now it's time to talk about value where we look at how this stacks up against the competitors and we'll give it a final score. So $28,000 front-wheel drive SE mid-grade. I think this is actually a pretty good package as far as features and a lot of the things that this has for that money. The quality level is pretty decent. Warranty coverage, not the best in the business. Hyundai and Kia definitely have it beat there but here you've got four years 50,000 miles bumper to bumper and you've got the Volkswagen driving experience. This is one of the first Volkswagens in a while that I've tested that sort of has the magic back. They seem to have lost it for a while there on some of the vehicles and here this this feels like the Volkswagen handling and overall character that I used to know having owned quite a few in my lifetime and that made me happy that it's back. So when I look at overall value here, I put that at four and a half stars. When you put that in with everything we've talked about, all the nuts and bolts, we're a total of four and a half stars for the review. Very good, very good, and to be honest with you, this almost makes my buy list. It comes so close but it's subjective that and that's the big thing really for me is the fact that it's got these fake exhaust tips on it. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't buy a car with those things on it. It's just, really? Do we have to have those things? And the other thing here of course is the auto start stop, something I just don't like. There has to be a lot of compensating factors for me to get over that with a car. If those two things don't bug you, this might be your new car. I really think it is a good option in this class. So there you go. If you like the review you just saw, please see my latest one right there or better yet, subscribe to my YouTube channel right down there. Either way, stay tuned.