Four million two hundred ninety thousand pesos—let that amount sink in for a second. That’s the entrance fee to Volkswagen Touareg ownership, especially if you want the Sport Edition pictured here. Is it worth it? Well, that’s a question not easily answered because you can take two points of view. The first is that you’ll look at it as a cut-price Porsche Cayenne because it largely shares the same running gear and platform as Stuttgart’s venerable SUV. On the other hand, if you’ll look it purely as a VW and as such, it costs about a third more than Wolfsburg’s next most expensive offering. Either way, it’s a gross oversimplification of the entire car. It’s neither a poor man’s Porsche nor a rich man’s Volkswagen; it’s got its own unique identity which you’ll only understand if you get to spend some time with it.
