Volkswagen Taigun: Gymkhana experience

The Drive

The Volkswagen Taigun has been in the news recently thanks to a new five-star GNCAP safety rating. This has put it right at the top of the list and it couldn’t have come at a better time than right at the first anniversary of the car’s arrival in India.

To celebrate the first anniversary and the high safety rating, VW recently announced a Taigun anniversary edition. It’s only available with the 1.0-litre TSI unit and has quite a few exterior and interior changes. We have detailed the car in a separate story which you can read here.

The Taigun Anniversary Edition was just one part of our celebration. The main reason we were at the airstrip in Lonavala, outside of Mumbai was to have some fun with the Taigun on a specialised gymkhana course set up by Volkswagen to display the driving prowess of the compact SUV. 

The driving course comprised three sections. A moose test followed by the gymkhana and in the third round, an acceleration test. Each participant would be given a chance in a manual Taigun followed by a round in the automatic Taigun. We were given a test run of the course in reverse order to familiarise ourselves with each of the challenges. This test run also allowed us to mark out our apexes, and braking points and of course get familiar with the gymkhana’s elaborate layout.

The moose test is designed to demonstrate a car’s ability to keep its composure in a rapid direction change situation, a.k.a if you have to dodge a moose on a rural back road. A more relatable example for us would be bovines or unwitting locals casually crossing state highways. 

To up the ante, a marshall stood between the lanes and would, at the last minute, point to where we had to go. The Taigun, at 60kmph, displayed good stability even with some wild steering input from me. Unsurprisingly, my wild input resulted in me launching some of the cones before I even completed the test. A good start then…

The gymkhana was a slightly better excursion, with me going off track only once thanks to taking a left instead of a right. Nonetheless, my second attempt in the automatic turned out to be more accurate and with faster time (for obvious reasons). 

I felt the steering could have had a bit more weight at low speed but I still had a lot of fun dancing through the course and in fact, only once felt a bit of panic when the car began to understeer through a heavy left-hander. I had not heeded the instructor’s words about braking early and letting the car glide into the turn.

The acceleration test was pretty straightforward. Line up, clutch out, gas in and shift every time the needle hits the red line. On the trial run, the instructor had to egg me on twice to keep going and push the car harder, which I did in the final run. Call it luck or skill, I was one of the few people to brake at the exact point on the finish line to complete the challenge. 

Not having got enough of the Taigun both with the course and the anniversary edition, we drove back to Mumbai in our long-term Taigun 1.0-litre AT that had been taken back for the event. The slow drive down the hills was a fitting end to our day with the compact SUV. 

On a final note, we have been running the Volkswagen Taigun in our long-term garage for the last six months in the 1.0-litre petrol automatic guise. Over half a year, we have driven it in the city, out on the highway and even used it for our shoots. It’s all detailed in our reviews section of the website.

Photography: Volkswagen India