Volkswagen Touareg Bids Farewell with Special Final Edition

A Review of the Touareg's Records

Volkswagen Race Touareg – the serial winner. The Touareg has also set the pace in off-road racing. With the Race Touareg, specially developed and driven by Volkswagen Motorsport, Volkswagen became one of the dominant teams in the Dakar Rally. This is reflected, among other things, in three consecutive victories: in 2009 with Giniel de Villiers, in 2010 with Carlos Sainz, and in 2011 with Nasser Al-Attiyah. The greatest advantages of these competition prototypes were their robust design, all-wheel drive, and exceptional reliability.

Touareg Stanley – winner of the Grand Challenge for autonomous vehicles. The Touareg Stanley, one of the first intelligent vehicles in automotive history, won the prestigious DARPA Grand Challenge (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in California, USA, in 2005. A total of 23 vehicles participated in the autonomous vehicle race through the Nevada desert, but only four reached the finish line. The Touareg Stanley completed the 212-kilometre route in 6 hours, 53 minutes, and 58 seconds without human intervention, and was the first to reach the finish line. Stanley was a joint project between Volkswagen and other research centres. Equipped with laser detectors, stereoscopic vision equipment, cameras, GPS, and specially developed control software, Stanley navigated rugged terrain with precision. The victory marked a milestone in the development of autonomous vehicles and heralded the beginning of partially automated assistance systems. The third generation of the production model Touareg saw the introduction of adaptive cruise control ACC with predictive cruise control – which, improved and now called Travel Assist – is one of the best partially automated driving assistance systems available today.

The Touareg that towed a Boeing. In 2006, Volkswagen made headlines worldwide and set a world record: a nearly standard Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI towed a Boeing 747 weighing about 155 tonnes along an airport runway. With its powerful torque of 750 Nm and modified chassis, the Touareg moved the jumbo more than 150 metres and then safely stopped it. For this extraordinary experiment, the Touareg was loaded with more than four tonnes of additional weight to optimally transfer power to the ground. Despite the enormous load, a standard engine, gearbox, and air suspension were used, impressively demonstrating the vehicle's performance and robustness.

The Touareg, a long-distance specialist. In 2011, the Volkswagen Touareg V6 TDI once again spectacularly demonstrated its endurance and reliability: in just 11 days, 17 hours, and 22 minutes, long-distance expert Rainer Zietlow and his team completed the legendary Panamericana – from Tierra del Fuego in Argentina to Alaska. The 22,750-kilometre route crossed 17 countries and almost all of the Earth's climate zones – from tropical heat and sandstorms to snow and ice. With this journey, the Touareg broke the previous world record by four days and once again impressively demonstrated its robustness, efficiency, and comfort.