The Dinky New Volkswagen T-Roc Is Here To Give The Nissan Juke A Kicking

This is Volkswagen’s trendy baby SUV, called the T-Roc and sold with a two-tone colour finish. It’s the sort of thing VW is hoping will appeal to people like us, if and when we’re looking for our next affordable daily driver fresh out of the showroom.

Built on the same chassis as the likes of the Golf, Polo and Audi A3, the dinky design somehow squeezes 445 litres of boot space behind five seats, potentially making it more practical than it has any right to be.

You get a choice of six turbocharged engines for the car, which is named ‘T’ to align with the Tiguan and Touareg, and ‘Roc’ - as in, ‘solid as a.’ There are 1.0-litre, 1.5-litre and 2.0-litre TSI petrols, which should all be good fun, plus an entry-level 1.6 TDI diesel and a whole bunch of 2.0-litre diesels with two- and four-wheel drive, manual and DSG gearboxes and a choice of 148bhp or 187bhp. The petrols match that selection right down to the power outputs.

It’s 4234mm long, making it 252mm shorter than the beefy Tiguan, but it’s wide enough to risk a few parking scrapes in careless hands, at 1819mm excluding mirrors. At launch it’s set to have two trim grades; Style and Sport. Bearing the very specific British consumer vanity in mind, we reckon most people will buy Sport.

Sport stretches the limits of marketing speak with ‘Sport Comfort seats’, an oxymoron to beat more or less any we’ve seen lately. It also gets a host of aesthetic goodies like red brake calipers and ambient lighting, while Style offers more choices for customisation and colour. It also has the connectivity package as standard.

All four-wheel drive T-Rocs will get special switchable driving modes; Street and Snow for on-road use, plus Offroad and Offroad individual, the latter of which allows some leeway in the settings for driver preference. It’s possible that the little trier might actually have some off-road talent. The likes of Comfort, Normal, Sport, Eco and Individual are the main modes – but they’re optional on front-driven T-Rocs.