Wed, Jun 23, 2010
We recently took a road trip down to Sesame Place as a mini-family vacation, before our third child arrives in August. I was able to test drive a Volkswagen Routan (MSRP $25,000- $42,500) down to Langhorne, PA, from our home in New York City.
The Routan was absolutely fantastic. As someone who hasn’t driven a new vehicle since 1994, I immediately fell in love with it. We were able to go from Queens to Langhorne (and back) without refueling! The ride was smooth – we did not feel a single bump in the road! City mileage per gallon was 17 and highway mileage per gallon was 25.
The features were terrific — we loved the dual remote-controlled power-sliding doors, remote-controlled rear door, rearview backup camera, luxurious leather seats, DVD players, satellite navigation system and radio, and the U Connect Bluetooth! There are several versions of the Routan; the S, SE, SEL and SEL Premium- which ranges from basic to fully loaded).
The Rearview Backup Camera was genius. When you’re backing up, you see live video of things like kids and pets — as well as other vehicles who might be behind you. It was like having eyes in the back of your head! The Routan also had front and rear 12V power outlets — so you can recharge things on the go. If you put the two rear seat rows down, there is 144 cubic feet of available cargo space. Since we have two children at the current time (#3 comes in August), we put the rearmost seat down and used that for storage.
The JoyBox Entertainment System went over really well. The multimedia rear-seat entertainment system has a hard drive and a USB port, so one can transfer music and picture files from CDs and even play movies while parked. It was great to play DVDS for my kids as we drove. There’s a screen for 2nd and 3rd rows. Also, the touch-screen navigation system can let me map out our route back and forth to Sesame Place. The only thing we didn’t like about the navigation was that it kept telling us it was rerouting due to traffic. It said this constantly and drove my husband crazy — we usually use a detachable Garmin GPS that doesn’t do that. We wished we could find out why the touch-screen navigation in the Routan was doing this and ended up turning it off most of the time. The seats were roomy and the version we tested came with sumptuous soft leather seats. As someone who just learned how to work bluetooh (thanks to Jabra), I loved that I could pair my phone with the Routan’s UConnect® Bluetooth® system, which let you answer and make calls by using voice commands. We really enjoyed testing the VW Routan and can recommend this vehicle 100%!
Volkswagen North America provided a VW Routan for review purposes.
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