2026 Volkswagen Tayron 150TSI Elegance review

Seven years after debuting in Australia, the Volkswagen Tiguan Allspace seven-seater is on its way out.

Fear not, though, because Volkswagen has not left us without an equivalent for those who need a couple of extra seats now and then.

Meet the Tayron, a slightly bigger, more feature-rich successor to the stretched Tiguan, for now, powered purely by petrol, but with a plug-in hybrid option on the radar in the coming months.

With more advanced safety features than its predecessor and a more premium feel, is it still an affordable option for family buyers? Let’s find out.

Until the plug-in hybrid arrives to broaden the range, there are four choices of Volkswagen Tayron on offer, catering to those on a budget as well as drivers who are more performance-focussed.

The line-up opens with the 110TSI Life for $48,290, which uses a 1.4-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol engine to drive the front wheels, followed by the 150TSI Life, which moves up to a 2.0-litre and all-wheel drive.

The mid-spec car, the 150TSI Elegance, is what I had on test and costs from $59,490, with the Golf GTI-powered R-Line topping the range at $73,490, with all prices before on-roads.

However, the car I had on test was a MY25 vehicle, and prices have risen for MY26. The 110TSI Life now costs $48,950, the 150TSI Life $54,790, the 150TSI Elegance $60,390, and the R-Line $74,550.

As standard on the 110TSI Life, the Tayron range features a 12.9-inch infotainment screen, a 10.25-inch digital instrument cluster with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, satellite navigation, a wireless charger, a powered tailgate, a 360-degree camera, and 18-inch alloy wheels.

From the 150TSI Life upwards, the Tayron comes with adaptive suspension and the 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol engine.

The 150TSI Elegance adds 19-inch alloy wheels, LED Plus headlights, illuminated front and rear emblems, leather upholstery, and heated, ventilated, powered seats with massage functionality. 

The outboard seats in the second row are also heated, as is the steering wheel. The Elegance also features chrome roof rails and body trim, as well as rear privacy glass.

All versions of the Tayron except the 150TSI Life have seven seats.

Despite some new additions for MY26, including upgraded AEB, illuminated badges, and smaller wheels for the lower grades, there’s no change in the asking price compared to MY25. For reference, the exact car I had was an MY25.

Options for the 150TSI Elegance include the Sound and Vision Package, which was on the test car I had, and features a larger 15-inch infotainment screen, a head-up display, HD matrix LED headlights, and a 10-speaker Harman Kardon sound system for an extra $4200. 

A Kodiaq 140TSI Sportline will set you back $61,990 drive-away, while a Sorento Sport+ with the 2.2-litre diesel and all-wheel drive, which starts from $62,180 before on-road costs. A Santa Fe Elite, meanwhile, starts from $63,150 before on-roads.

On paper, the Tayron is claimed to sip 7.7 litres per 100 kilometres, which isn’t amazingly low, but for its size and segment it isn’t too bad either.

On test, it used a bit more than the claimed figure, averaging 8.6L/100km across a mix of town and freeway driving.

The Kodiaq and Santa Fe both claim higher fuel economy figures at 9.2L and 9.1L, respectively, while the Sorento, with its diesel engine, is the best of the bunch, offering a claimed 6.0L/100km. 

Not yet, no. However, a plug-in hybrid version is expected to arrive in Australia in the first half of 2026.

The wider Volkswagen Group line-up, including Skoda and Cupra, also has more mild-hybrid and plug-in hybrid options, including the related Kodiaq, so you can cross-shop if you’re not tied to the Tayron.

The Volkswagen Tayron 150TSI Elegance comes with an industry-standard five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty, with servicing every 12 months or 15,000km, whichever comes first.

Service pricing is not cheap, though. The first, third and fifth visits each cost $581, with the second and fourth an eye-watering $1045 and $1526, respectively. However, VW offers up-front service packages which come with discounts. These are detailed in the price table below.

Comparatively, the Hyundai Santa Fe Elite has a five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty, extended to seven years if serviced exclusively with Hyundai, every 12 months/10,000km.

The Kia Sorento Sport+, meanwhile, is covered by a seven-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty, with servicing every 12 months/15,000km, as is the Skoda Kodiaq 140TSI Sportline.

The Volkswagen Tayron 150TSI Elegance will cost $2750 to comprehensively insure based on a comparative quote for a 35-year-old male living in Chatswood, NSW. Insurance estimates may vary based on your location, driving history, and personal circumstances.

The Volkswagen Tayron has a five-star ANCAP rating from 2025, and it applies to all variants.

The Tayron was given an 87 per cent pass mark for the adult and child occupant protection categories, as well as 83 per cent for vulnerable road users, and 85 per cent for the effectiveness of its safety technologies.

As standard, it has an extensive list of safety equipment. In addition to the features listed in the table below, it has nine airbags, a door exit warning, automatic parking, and an upgraded AEB compared to the MY25 model.

In practice, some of the safety warnings are a little annoying and intrusive, but not overwhelmingly so.

Occasionally, the driver monitor is triggered when it’s not warranted, such as if you look away to a mirror or the screen for a split second, and the forward collision warning and rear cross-traffic alert also activate unnecessarily. 

The latter twice triggered and forced the AEB into action when the car was in reverse but stopped, such as pulling out of a driveway slowly. Rather than just beeping and flashing a warning, it took over control of the vehicle aggressively, which was quite startling and unexpected.

It’s worth noting, however, that this car was an MY25, and the AEB has been “upgraded” for MY26, so we’ll have to test this again in the future to see if any tangible improvements have been made.

The cruise control also leaves it a bit late to brake, which can be really disconcerting, and it’s not particularly good at keeping the car centred in the lane.

The Tayron is a seven-seater, but it doesn’t actually look all that big from the outside. 

While it might be categorised as a large SUV, it doesn’t seem as big as vehicles like the Santa Fe or Sorento, which are more obviously on the higher end of the spectrum.

Compared to the Tiguan Allspace, it is slightly larger overall, and similarly is bigger than the Kodiaq too.

In many ways, it looks quite similar to the Tiguan, with big VW badges front and back. The headlights and daytime running lights look similar, but the grilles are different, with the Tayron sporting a three-tiered, straight-line design.

In profile, there’s not much to set them apart, but at the rear they are more distinct, and the Tayron is the more striking with its strong singular light bar and sharper lines.

It’s attractive enough, but not a stand-out in terms of its kerb appeal in the way that perhaps the ID.4 or ID.5 catches your eye as something a bit new and intriguing. 

In the same way that the exterior of the Tayron is a little underdone, the interior is a bit dull and nothing to write home about. 

It’s well made and the materials aren’t cheap in feel or appearance, but everything is quite dark and there’s a lot of piano black plastic. 

The faux-wood trim offers some juxtaposition, but it looks out of place next to all the black rather than complementing it. The ambient lighting is a highlight, breaking up the darkness, and you can choose from several different options. I went for pink because it made my two-year-old happy, and a happy toddler makes for a less hectic car ride.

The leather seats are nice and comfortable, though. They’re very soft and squishy, and the contrast stitching is neat and tasteful.

I also like the dual functionality of the dial on the centre console, which can be used to control volume or to alternate between drive modes. Unlike the multi-purpose dials in the Kodiaq, this one feels more durable and less prone to breakage.

There are two USB-C ports in the front row, and another two in the second, for connecting devices, but none in the third.

All rows have decent-sized cupholders, as well as good room in the doors for storing bottles and other things. The door pockets are also lined, which means things don’t bang or rattle around so much, and that is a win.

Other room for storing small items up front includes the glove box, a bin underneath the centre armrest, and above the wireless charging pad is a little shelf that lifts up so you can access the dual slots underneath.

It’s a nice idea, and it was useful for putting my things on, but more often than not it led to me forgetting my phone in the car because it hides it from view, which was quite annoying.

Room in the front row is good, there’s plenty around the driver and front passenger, and the massage function on the front seats is actually enjoyable, whereas I often find most vehicles with massage seats are too firm.

There’s also a decent amount of room in the second row. I had more than enough for my legs and above my head behind my own driving position, and I’m 167cm tall. 

The second row of seats slides forward, but not as much as you might think, and it will be necessary to move it all the way as far as it will go to be able to fit an adult in the back semi-comfortably.

There are ISOFIX anchors for child seats on the outboard seats of the second row, and three top-tether points across the back, but I think you’d struggle to fit three across side-by-side. You also can’t put children under seven in the third row because there are no top-tether points there.

Sitting in the third row for an hour or so as an adult is quite squished. I had to move the second row all the way forward, and then my toddler complained that there wasn't any room for her legs, so I wouldn’t choose to use the two rearmost seats unless I absolutely had to.

As a five-seater, the boot space is generous, offering 850 litres to the second row, but if you do need all seven seats, there’s 345L to the third row, which is still enough for a few bags. 

As I only really needed six seats at most during my time with the car, I had a one-up-one-down situation, so I could use half of the third row for a passenger and the other half for a pram.

Under the boot floor, there is a space-saver spare wheel, which is a bonus. Not quite as good as a full-size one, but better than a repair kit or nothing. And there’s also space to store the luggage cover for when you don’t need it.

The overall presentation of the Tayron’s infotainment is good. The menu is laid out clearly, and everything makes sense. 

Its display is crisp and bright, and I didn’t encounter any problems while using it. 

The unit itself looks a little plonked on the dashboard, like a giant iPad, rather than integrated within. 

Thanks to the optional Sound and Vision Package added to my test car, it had the larger 15-inch screen, as well as a head-up display and 10-speaker Harman Kardon sound system with subwoofer. The quality of the latter is very good, with, obviously, lots of bass, though there was the odd crackle at times.

Also included in this package are HD matrix LED headlights, a clever technology that temporarily turns off segments of the lights when another car is approaching, so as not to dazzle the oncoming driver.

They were first introduced by Audi more than 10 years ago. However, I found the way they work on the Tayron to be very rough and unrefined, and not at all as smooth in their application as even older Audis.

When driving with auto high beam on at night, the segments that are turned off appear as black blocks or patches on the road ahead, which is incredibly disconcerting and can even cause you to mistake them for a person or animal. 

Like many other modern vehicles, including those in the Volkswagen Group, there is a distinct lack of climate-control buttons. There are just sliders for temperature at the bottom of the screen, with everything else contained within it.

There are some shortcuts at the bottom of the screen as well, which is a halfway house, but it’s still fiddly to adjust things like the fan speed and other settings.

The main letdown is the camera quality. 

The 360-degree parking camera is so blurry and muddy, like it has had Vaseline smeared all over it. Unfortunately, this is the case with most Volkswagen Group models, as I remember it from others I’ve recently tested, such as the Golf.

Considering that this is positioned as a premium vehicle, it’s not really up to task. It says something when a car costing half the money, for example, an MG ZS, has a better camera than this.

Volkswagen owners can also access the brand's GoConnect app, which offers features like remote vehicle monitoring, location tracking, diagnostics, and service-related tools. It's free for the first five years, after which you can continue to subscribe for a fee.

The Tayron 150TSI Elegance is powered by the same 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol engine as the outgoing Tiguan Allspace producing 150kW/320Nm.

The engine is mated to a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, with power sent to all four wheels.

The base variant’s outputs from the 1.4-litre turbo-four are unchanged compared to the equivalent Tiguan's, though it moves from a six-speed to a seven-speed DSG, while the higher-spec R-Line’s power from the same 2.0-litre and seven-speed is boosted from 162kW to 195kW.

The DSG is quite frustrating. It feels very unsure of itself, struggling to find the right gear at low speeds, such as in crawling traffic. When you’re cruising along at higher speeds, it seems more confident, and the Tayron is quite nice to drive with power delivered more smoothly. 

The exception to this is Eco mode, which is so set on its mission that it almost doesn’t want to move at all. Putting your foot down is like trying to get a dog to hurry along on a walk when it’s sniffing a bush; you’re tugging at the lead, but it just wants to stay where it is.

The ride is a bit of a mixed bag too. Over uneven surfaces, it can feel quite jittery, while at other times it can feel a bit softly sprung and bouncy, especially when recovering from large bumps. If the road is smooth, it’s great, but there aren’t too many of those around these days.

There are a multitude of settings in the adaptive chassis control menu, ranging from very comfortable to very sporty. On the lowest it is horribly wallowy, while at the top end it's stiff as a board. While it's nice to have the ability to fine-tune it to suit your individual tastes, there is such a thing as too much choice, with each individual notch on the sliding scale not all that different from the one next to it.

The highlights, though, are excellent noise suppression and steering. 

Acoustic glass helps soften the impact of wind, and effort has obviously been put into insulating the cabin from road noise, too, resulting in a relatively serene environment (when not transporting children, obviously).

The steering is sharp and direct, and feels very natural and intuitive, like it knows where you want to go before you do. It’s not overly quick, but equally, it’s not slow and doesn’t take a lot of hand-over-hand to get around bends.

If you want a mid-to-large European SUV that feels premium and drives nicely, the Tayron fits the bill. 

It is a fitting replacement for the Tiguan Allspace, but convincing buyers to transfer from old to new might still take some doing. People like to stick to what they know.

Carving out a place for itself in a busy segment is going to be tough, though, especially with no (current) hybrid options on offer, higher-than-claimed fuel economy, and pricey servicing. 

The 150TSI Elegance offers a nice balance of performance, features and flexibility with the extra seats. But if you want to spend a little less, only need five seats, or want the benefit of a slightly larger boot, the 110TSI Life or 150TSI Life could also be worth looking at.

Or maybe even wait for the plug-in hybrid, which will likely raise the asking price, but also help make the Tayron more competitive.

A born-and-bred newshound, Kathryn has worked her way up through the ranks reporting for, and later editing, two renowned UK regional newspapers and websites, before moving on to join the digital newsdesk of one of the world’s most popular newspapers – The Sun. More recently, she’s done a short stint in PR in the not-for-profit sector, and led the news team at Wheels Media.

Read more about Kathryn Fisk