As a little bit of publicity for Aussie Motoring we have the URL emblazoned across the rear windscreen of our car and for some reason it seems to bring out the worst in some motorists. Some drivers seem to want to impress us by sitting glued to our tail on the highway – so tightly attached to us that you can’t even see their headlights in the rear vision mirror.
Others want to take us on at traffic lights and earlier this week one absolute tool forced their way up our left-hand side as we drove out of the narrow exit of a hospital carpark. That particular individual was driving a new VW Touareg V8 and at the time all I could think of was that she really needed to be driving ‘Stanley’ – a robotic vehicle built around the VW Touareg. Even robots have some thought of self-preservation and that was something the other driver lacked.
‘Stanley’ was the first robotic vehicle to ever complete the annual Grand Challenge run in the US by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. You can read more about the challenge here.
While I had seen photos of the Touareg before actually seeing one first-hand came as a bit of a surprise – even as I slammed on the brakes and waited for her to rip the front of our car off. In the photos I had see it looked to be around the size of a Subaru Forrester but in real life it’s a much larger.
Here in Australia the VW Touareg is available in five cylinder turbo diesel, V6 and V8 petrol and V10 diesel models. The V6 and five cylinder diesel both come in base or luxury versions and all models come with a range of options.
Prices start at at $69,900 for the base model V6 and five cyclinder diesel and peak at $142,050 for the fully optioned V10 diesel. Delivery charges, stamp duty and registration costs are all extra. That’s a lot of money to pay for something that comes with with one of those silly reduced-size spare tyres.
Unfortunately the only images on the VW Australia website are of the left hand drive model as sold in the US.