Volkswagen’s latest flagship SUV is striking to look at. And this third iteration of the big VW comes with enough technology to make your eyes water.

The Touareg will arrive in Ireland in time to get 182 on its plates. There will be two V-shaped six-cylinder engines available, one with 232bhp and the other with 287bhp.

The new Touareg is bigger than the previous model both internally and externally, with an extra 100 litres or so of boot space. Despite this upscaling, the new one is 106kg lighter than the older version.

Room

In the real world, sitting in the Touareg you can feel the extra room – there is plenty of legroom in the back, even with a taller person in the pilot’s seat.

While sitting in said pilot’s seat, the new Innovision cockpit really surrounds you, with its twin 12in and 15in displays feeling a little like a wall of technology helping you get down the road as easily as possible.

The 15in display will be an extra and, at something around €3,600 from the extras list, it isn’t cheap. Using the big screen is very intuitive. There is a smart tablet-style tile layout, with each tile customisable. You could spend hours setting the system to your liking.

The seats now come with a massage function, which Volkswagen claims will makes “long journeys short”. Yes, it is comfy, but that is a bold claim even by Volkswagen’s standards.

The LED matrix lighting gives many different options but when set in auto high beam, the lights adjust constantly by directing the light to where it best helps the driver while not blinding leading or oncoming drivers. While out for a drive in the dark, it could be seen that they were constantly adjusting to give the best view for the driver.

The front of the Touareg would be an imposing sight in your rear view mirrors.

Party trick

The big party trick at night is the addition of night vision. This allows the car to pick up the thermal image of pedestrians or animals who may have strayed into the way. It will automatically flash the lights three times at the person or animal and give off a warning beep in the cabin if the system decides that they are in danger. This system has to have other more practical agricultural uses, such as the ability to find that lost sheep or bullock at 3am of a winter’s night.

Towing

Trailer-towing capacity is the full 3,500kg, which is very good for this type of premium jeep. The Touareg comes with trailer assist. This technology has been around for a while but, having had a go at it, you can see that it may be of use to the less confident trailer driver. If the skills are there to reverse the trailer then there is absolutely no requirement for it. Using it involves deciding what direction you want the trailer to head and using the wing mirror adjustor to set and change the direction on the move.

The driving experience of the new Touareg seems to be a marked improvement over the previous version. This one comes with optional air suspension, which allows it to do some cool tricks, such as lowering to allow you to hook to a trailer or to get a heavy piece of kit into the boot. This system also allows the VW to lower and raise depending on the driving setting that is chosen – there are five on-road and five off-road settings. These will be explored later in the summer when we do a full Irish drive of the Touareg.

Better test

On the short run up the Austrian Alps, the big jeep seemed to be well behaved but, yet again, a decent run on Ireland’s finest roads will be a better test of the new flagship.

The first ones in Ireland will be higher-specification models and will have 182 plates. The bulk of the new arrivals at other spec levels will arrive for 191. The Touareg comes in five-seat format only and currently there are no plans for a commercial version.

On first inspection, the big Volkswagen seems to be a big very comfy machine with lots of nice features and technology but a week of normal life in Ireland will be a better test of its attributes.

According to VW, prices start from €66,170 including VAT.