>> Brian: Hard to pronounce, even harder to spell and judging by sales figures kind of hard to love. The VW Touareg 2TDI has ditched its goofy V10 diesel for a new oil burning V6 and it gets the new corporate head unit, so let's check the tech inside and out.
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>> Brian: Now, inside this car we've got the more advanced, more modern VW head unit. A lot of good features here. As you can see it's a touch-screen and you've got pretty good size large virtual buttons. It's not hard to get around plus you've got dedicated hard keys along the side here but notice as I navigate around it's kind of pokey. It's real kind of slow and a lot of people have complained about this. Now, follow with me here on the iconography. Notice that the red surrounds mean Not On, the white surround means that source is On, that's craziness that makes no sense but that's how they do it on this VW interface. We have a CD slash DVD single tray here. You can also add a very quaint 6 disk changer in the rear. Take it back to the, I don't know, late 90's. Then you've got the SD card slot which is right here on the left. Here's your hard disk drive about 18GB free, you can rip to that and then you've got what's called Media In, that's a multimedia connector that lives over in the glove box. Right now we have our iPhone connected to it. It reads really well from on iPhone 3G in this case. And that multimedia connector's here in the glove box and as you see there's the iPhone. If you want to change that out to let's say this USB pigtail you just disconnect it up there on the roof of the glove box, not too hard to do, and then you've got USB. But note you've got to change pigtails so you're gonna have one or the other at any given time, not a big problem. Now, I'm popping a DVD in there now so we can take a look at how it presents movies, again, something you do when you're parked and stopped. It goes to full screen automatically. Otherwise rounding out your choices on the radio side are AM, FM, Sirius, Sirius XM and no HD radio on this guy. Several ways to bring up the audio on this guy you've got an enhanced VW system, 8 channels of amplification, 11 speakers and then on top of that you can go one more tier and put the Dine Audio system in place which we don't have. You'd know it from Dine Audio badges all around the speakers, so this is the enhanced VW system. It sound okay it's not great. Big improvement in the map quality lately on these VW head units. The resolution is much tighter, they've got a much finer dot pitch on the display and the graphics that are being pushed into it are much better, so we're at, you know, Audi, Mercedes, Lexus quality right now with this look. What holds this thing up is this incredible lag when you're trying to enter things. Man it goes like a really old DVD based rig, not good. You have what's called the Driver Assist package you do get a back up camera, it has trajectory. On top of that you've also got a park distance control, a park distance sensor system which is bundled in with the camera as part of that package. This is a 42 something thousand dollar vehicle and Bluetooth hands-free isn't included you have to add it for a paltry how much, 275 bucks? And they think folks who would buy this high trim SUV don't just want it? Coupled with that V6 turbo diesel there's only one gear box to go with it's this automatic here with a T shaped sporty shifter. It's a fairly typical slush box, pretty routine stuff. What you don't have blessedly are boy racer shift paddles. And all the Touareg 2's have 4 motion all wheel drive; this setting right here which gets you to the different modes like high and low gear case. Now, driving a Touareg 2 is a banquet of torque as you might expect, but unless you keep the gear box in the Sport mode I found it pretty loopy and slippery with lots of spooling up and down in everyday traffic. The Touareg 2 isn't exactly people's car priced so it's a dam good thing the interior is pretty plush. But while though seats are inviting there are only 2 rows of them available and no rear seat entertainment system is on the option list. And did I mention you have to pay extra for Bluetooth? The Touareg 2 requires a keen eye to tell it from the Touareg 1 you won't find a 2 designation anywhere on the badge work, so don't worry if you think you're missing the big difference in styling there really isn't one. An '09 Touareg 2 TDI bases at $43,500, not including Bluetooth. Oh, I said that already.
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