You’ve probably all seen the commercials for the Touareg by now. First of all, let me just express my dissappointment in VW for giving in to the SUV market…I was hoping they’d stick to what they’re already good at, but I guess it’s just a sign of the times.
Anyway, on to the real point of this post. In one of the Touareg commercials, they advertise that the SUV can safely travel through up to ~2 feet of water. Not only that, but nowhere in the fineprint do they even throw in a warning about never crossing moving water, or driving safely, or anything.
Okay, is it just me, or does anyone else see the sheer stupidity of this? I can just imagine some idiot trying to cross a flooded low-water crossing, only to be swept off and killed downstream, all the while thinking that he’d be safe in his new mighty Touareg.
Now maybe I’m wrong, and the Touareg really can drive through 22 whole inches of swift-moving floodwater; but seeing as the average car can easily be swept away in less than 6 inches of the same stuff, I seriously doubt it. It seems to me Volkswagen is just begging for lawsuits, and worse yet, to get someone killed…
Yeah, the Germans are funny that way; they seem to have the ridiculous idea that people should be responsible for their own actions. I’m being tongue-in-cheek here, but it’s kind of true. They don’t seem to get how the litigious American society works. Like when Audi was engulfed in the whole “unintended acceleration” controversy, and the president of the company said something to the effect that “Americans just don’t know the difference between the gas and the brake”. What he said was completely true; it just wasn’t politically correct.
Oh I absolutely agree that people are complete morons for attempting this stuff in the first place, I’m just saying that Volkswagen is putting the notion into people’s heads that it’s now safe to do this in their car, without even a warning or clarification that you could still be swept away in any sort of moving water. Granted, they’re not actually driving through moving water in the commercial, but there’s certainly no implication that you can’t, or shouldn’t.
Although a side of me does simply want to see this bottom-quotient of American society weeded out by their own idiotic doing, the rest of me doesn’t want to have to put firefighters’ and other authorities’ lives and resources at stake to save the fool who goes and nearly gets drowned because the commercial told him he could.
I would’ve thought that Volkswagen of America was responsible for stateside marketing, and that Germans wouldn’t have much to do with it. Maybe I’m wrong.
But I have a grudge against Volkswagen anyway. Volkswagen sucks. Fuck Volkswagen.
It depends on where your air intake is. If your air intake is below water level, incompressible water gets sucked into your engine which then tries to compress it. The result is called hydrolock and usually necessitates a complete rebuild of the engine. Many a driver has plunged into an innocent seeming puddle and emerged several thousand dollars poorer. So if you’re going to be building an engine for a vehicle that people are going to be playing the fool in, you should put the air intake pretty high up.
If you insist on driving into streams, you probably also risk doing bad things to your electrical system, exhaust, bearings, and brakes, but none of those are as serious as killing the engine or, I suppose, getting swept away in the raging current.
Unfortunately, it’s not that great a story. But someone must pay. I figure the Volkswagen corporation is the most logical target for my vendetta. So I’m telling everyone how crappy my experience with Fahrvergnugen was. Incidentally, I’m still driving the damn Hitlermobile. But not for much longer, hopefully.
I hate VW’s, too. And I sincerely hate SUV’s, the most useless car form ever.
Imagine my delight when they launched the Touareg. Or, as Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame called it, the “Toe Rag”.
Do you guys get BBC World? Look for the Top Gear listings, and catch the rerun of the episode with the Touareg test. Short summary: fantastic V10 diesel engine, but a worthless piece of shite both on and off the road.
2 feet of water? The stupid thing could hardly clear 3 inches of sand.
If we are thinking of the same commercial (they do it in a Beetle - bad idea, do it in a Touareg - good idea) then it isn’t moving water they drove through, just a big unexpected mud puddle in a dip in a dirt road.
We were just looking at one the other day (Mr. Ben still has remnants of his ‘want truck now!’ phase of a couple years ago). The Touareg is comparable in size to our Passat wagon. The trunk depth is a bit less, but there’s more room in the back seat. Over all about the same tho, due, if the rumors are true, to the fact that it arose out of some playing the engineers did when they were developing the current Passat body.
It’s no Mibotsu Monstrosity, but it’s not a Honda Civic either. Don’t think I’d go get one for myself, but he’s lusted after much scarier vehicles.
