Volkswagen Tiguan Allspace review: the new seven-seat SUV could be the perfect motor for growing families

WHY did the MPV die? And nope, it’s not the start of a bad joke.

I am genuinely wondering. Maybe because the letters M, P and V  together sound like a sexually transmitted disease.

Or perhaps it is because the Multi Purpose Vehicle — or People Carrier — is about as cool as Jeremy Corbyn in Crocs.

There was a time when, if you wanted to have three or more kids, you were forced to drag your sleep-deprived self down to the nearest Renault dealership and start speccing up an Espace: a car so dreary it could send a glass eye to sleep.

If you didn’t want to part company  with your sexy saloon or sporty hatchback, you would have to keep your bedside table stocked with Durex. Sorry, but that’s just the way it was. These days, that’s all changed, thank goodness.

A new set of initials, the SUV, has muscled in, offering small-car characteristics with MPV space.

The only problem is, a lot of them still aren’t actually very well suited to large families.

If your ambition is to field your own family five-a-side team or be a minicab driver specialising in parties, SUVs such as the Nissan Qashqai don’t cut the mustard.

Manufacturers are waking up to this. It’s why VW has just released the Tiguan Allspace, a seven- seater version of its astoundingly popular mid-size SUV.

The Allspace is built on the same platform as the regular Tiguan. It has simply been stretched and bulged in the right places to allow an optional third row of seats (for the smelliest and noisiest kids).

Thankfully, it has not required a drastic overhaul. The increases are marginal, which means from a distance you would struggle to tell the Allspace apart from the Tiguan.

I say thankfully, because the Tiguan is one of the more engaging drives in the SUV segment and to lose that sense of fun would be a crying shame.

The wheelbase has been lengthened by 109mm, freeing up space for the extra seats, and the overall length of the car has increased by 215mm. It is also very slightly taller, for the sake of keeping balance. So what does that extra room look like in figures? Without the two seats at the  back, the Allspace can take 700 litres of luggage while the regular Tiguan has 615 litres.

With the second row of seats folded down too, it will take a gargantuan 1,775 litres.

At launch there are two petrol engines available,  a 1.4TSI and 2.0TSI,  and a choice of three diesel (interesting to see VW still has faith in the black pumps).

The 2-litre petrol comes with VW’s 4MOTION AWD system, as do the more powerful two diesel lumps. It is an optional extra in the lower-powered diesel but for some reason not available on the 1.4 petrol.  Go figure. My advice is to opt for 4MOTION. It is a fantastic AWD system and on a car this big, you want to be as sure-footed as possible.

Stepping into the two-wheel drive after trying the AWD, my confidence on the greasy British B-roads ebbed considerably.

They aren’t idiots at VW. The Tiguan recently overtook the Passat as its second-best seller, behind the ubiquitous Golf.

There won’t have been many hours of head-scratching in Wolfsburg before they came up with the Allspace as a way of capitalising on Europe’s love affair with the Tiguan.

In fact, VW says it expects the Allspace to eventually account for 15 per cent of overall Tiguan sales.

The MPV is dead. Long live the SUV.