Volkswagen Taigo review

There’s good and bad inside the Taigo, so let’s start with what we like. The steering wheel is a nice size and good shape, and you get proper buttons, as opposed to the awkward touch-sensitive things found elsewhere in the VW Group.

You also get a separate panel for the climate controls, which in lowest-spec Life trim, consists of easy-to-use buttons and knobs. However, in the upper two trim levels it’s an unintuitive touch-button one, with sliders performing the functions of knobs and buttons. Shame, but it’s at least better than being incorporated into the infotainment system, as is the way with the Mk8 Golf.

Despite the chopped roofline the two-tiered boot is still an impressive size too. The boxier T-Cross gets a 455-litre boot and the Taigo only loses 15 litres – that compares to 400 litres in the Seat Arona, 422 litres in the Nissan Juke and Renault Captur, and just losing out to the Ford Puma’s 456.

But it all just feels a little… cheap and uninspired. The seats aren’t the most comfortable and there’s a lot of hard plastic in here, from the dash to the centre console (though we like the thoughtful, different size cupholders) and the single-piece door panels. Spare a thought for rear seat passengers, who don’t even get a fabric armrest. Leg room, fortunately, is adequate, and with four USB ports – two front, two rear – and wireless charging as standard, passengers won’t be able to complain about a lack of battery power. As long as, that is, they’ve got their USB-C adapter with them.

Otherwise there’s the usual VW tech gripe – you get an 8.0-inch instrument cluster as standard, but it looks a little lost in the space for the larger 10.25-inch unit, and the infotainment system is laggy and can be confusing to operate. The Apple CarPlay connection was far from seamless either, freezing and dropping connection on more than one occasion.

Oh, and one final thing – visibility has been compromised for the sake of style; those are some fairly chunky C pillars to put up with when reversing.