Five-seat Tiguan drops old model’s angular styling and adopts a new tablet touchscreen and rotary ‘Driver Experience Switch’
August 23, 2023 at 04:41
We already had a fairly solid idea about how the 2024 VW Tiguan would look thanks to mutliple spy shots, VW’s own carefully choreographed teaser campaign featuring disguised prototypes and a glimpse of an undisguised car shooting video footage for the upcoming launch. But we’ve now got an even better look at the car minus any camo thanks to a set of leaked images that reveal the new SUV’s curves in all their disguise-free glory.
Three pictures shared on the Facebook group MQB-Coding & Retrofit show the front, rear and interior of the third-generation Tiguan that’s due to make its official debut later this year and will be on sale in Europe and Australia in 2024. It won’t be heading to the U.S., however. North American buyers will have their Tiguan Allspace replaced by a version of the three-row VW Tayron that is currently sold in China, and which is also heading for Europe to sit alongside the Tiguan.
The leaked exterior shots give us a clear view of the Tiguan’s smooth nose, wide lower grille and narrow upper grille that consists of a simple flush panel that is almost certainly illuminated and connects the darkened headlight units. Instead of the strong straight lines running nose to tail along the flanks of the old SUV, the new one has softer shapes set off by a pair of eyebrow creases over the front and rear wheelwells and a gently rising waistline. And the rear’s defining feature is a fat plastic panel that connects the two taillights.
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Related: 2024 VW Tiguan Caught Completely Undisguised During Filming
A third image shows the interior, though it’s of less interest because we already got a look at the undisguised dashboard and its 15-inch tablet touchscreen and stalk-mounted gear shifter in VW’s recent teaser release. Junking the traditional console shifter has freed up space for a new ‘Driving Experience Switch’ that can be seen in action in a new promo video from Volkswagen.
Kind of like a cross between BMW’s iDrive controller and a traditional drive mode selector dial, this one allows you to change multiple settings on the car through a combination of twisting the dial and pushing its center. VW says it can be used to adjust the radio volume, tweak the behavior of the all-wheel drive system and powertrain and adjust the ambient lighting. It certainly looks cool, but time will tell how annoying or useful it is in practice.
We’ve seen something similar in VW’s recent ID.2all concept, but unlike that little hatch the new Tiguan won’t be offered with an electric drivetrain. Instead, the MQB Evo platform already used by cars like the Mk8 Golf will be home to a lineup of petrol, diesel and hybrid engines.
Images: MQB Coding