Volkswagen T-Cross long-term review: report 9
The Volkswagen T-Cross impressed us on test, but how will it work in the hands of Millie, a key-worker in a care home?...
The car Volkswagen T-Cross 1.0 TSI 115 SE
Run by Millie Mangwanya
Why it’s here To see if Volkswagen’s smallest SUV is worth the extra over the Polo on which it's based
Needs to Not feel out of its depth on the motorway, be comfortable on long trips and prove more practical than a hatchback
Mileage 6807 List price £20,205 Target Price £19,433 Price as tested £22,580 Test economy 45.0mpg Official economy 47.1mpg (combined)
3 June 2020 – Good space, good comfort and...good karma
Whether or not you believe in karma, it’s often the case that one good deed will grease the wheels of kindness, encouraging a chain reaction of generosity to spread like poppies in a battlefield. And that’s what’s happening here.
If you’ve read report 7, you’ll know that Millie’s a care worker who had her car written off, and Volkswagen’s good deed – lending her our T-Cross – means she no longer has to get the train, making her journey to work immeasurably better. So now, when the care home is short-staffed, she’s able to take on extra shifts to help out.
She’s also been able to resume another act of kindness. For a while now, she’s been dropping off a weekly shop to her friend – a young lady who’s a single mother looking after her four kids. Millie’s a bit of a hero, but even for her, carrying food for five on the train was too much to handle. Thankfully, the T-Cross’s sizeable boot does the job brilliantly. It’s been swallowing a large helping of Morrison’s shopping with room to spare.
What else has the T-Cross come up trumps for? Its compactness elsewhere, for one. If you’re looking at it thinking, “that’s too big for me to park,” according to Millie it slips into spaces as easily as bread into a toaster. The high-up driving position and good visibility help, although she does think the addition of rear parking sensors would be a sensible option to tick.
Speaking of the driving position, she’s become a fan of that, too. After years of driving regular hatchbacks, including her old Golf, she reckons the T-Cross’s lofty, SUV vantage point is brilliant, as is its driver’s seat. The T-Cross comes with seat height and lumbar adjustment as standard, which, along with supportive cushions, has kept her free from aches and pains as she makes her merry way up and down the M1.
Another pleasure is how stable it is on the motorway. We’ve always said that the T-Cross has natural and intuitive steering, and Millie agrees, praising how easy it is to keep centred in a lane. Only the odd lapse in concentration has it wandering, at which point the standard lane-keeping assistance function springs in to life and discreetly nudges her back in line. It’s fair to say, then, that the T-Cross has been a positive influence all round.
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