Volkswagen T-Cross review

You’ll have no problem fitting in the front of the Volkswagen T-Cross if you’re tall. Leg room is as generous as it is in a Volkswagen Polo and, being a relatively high-roof SUV, there’s plenty of head room as well. It’s not exactly cramped width-wise, but the slightly broader Volkswagen T-Roc offers a bit more elbow room between you and your passenger.

Interior storage is plentiful. There’s a sliding drawer under the driver’s seat, a large glovebox and door bins, plus a multitude of trays, cubbies and cupholders for all your odds and sods.

By the standards of the small SUV class, rear space in the T-Cross is impressive. There’s more leg and head room than you get in the back of the Seat Arona, for example; enough for a couple of six-footers to be comfortable, even when sitting behind people of equivalent height. The Skoda Kamiq has even more leg room, though.

A definite bonus is the T-Cross's unobtrusive central floor tunnel. It allows the middle rear passenger to slide into their seat without much clambering and doesn't force them to sit legs akimbo, straddling a wide hump. That said, if you regularly need to seat three adults in the rear, the wider T-Roc is more generous for shoulder room.

Every model offers the flexibility of sliding rear seats that let you prioritise boot space or rear leg room depending on your needs – few of the T-Cross's rivals offer that feature, and it doesn't appear on the closely related Arona or Kamiq, the bigger T-Roc, or the Ford Puma.

It would be even handier if the rear bench didn’t slide in its entirety and, instead, each seat could be moved individually, as they do in more expensive, larger SUVs. The rear seatbacks split in the usual 60/40 pattern, for those times when you need to accommodate bigger loads and passengers at the same time, but they don't recline, though.

We’ve already mentioned that the T-Cross has sliding rear seats and, assuming you've slid these all the way back to maximise rear leg room, boot space is roughly on a par with what you'll get in the Volkswagen Golf. In other words, there's enough space for a buggy or a decent haul of holiday luggage or, if you slide the seats forward, more space than you get in a Nissan Qashqai (although don't expect to carry adults in the back at the same time).

The slightly pricier T-Roc has an even bigger boot, though, as does the Kamiq. If you want a really big load bay in your small SUV, look at the Puma.

Go for a T-Cross in SE trim or above and you'll get a height-adjustable boot floor. This allows you to create a separate space beneath the main boot compartment, or, if you slot the floor in its highest setting, you eliminate any annoying step in the floor of the extended load bay when you've folded down the rear seats. The optional Beats sound system removes that facility, though, because it has a subwoofer that lives under the boot floor.