On the pages of our Journal, we return tocar and motorcycle topics . Through the words of the editor of the motoring magazine Autožurnál, Michal Karpat, in this first part we will move to the northwestern coast of Norway. We will get acquainted with one of the best touring cars, the new Volkswagen Touareg, which, like our brand's clothing, is also produced in Slovakia.
The most famous section of this road is the so-called Drunk Bridge, which you may have seen in a James Bond movie. When viewed from one side, it appears to rise sharply into the clouds with a sharp edge on the horizon, and from the other, it appears to plunge deep into the water.
We drove up to an altitude of 947 m and then wandered for an hour and a half along the fjord ridge and enjoyed other fascinating views. In many places you can see long waterfalls flowing from glaciers at their peaks. Wherever you go in Norway, you have something to admire. The local nature is simply beautiful. I highly recommend visiting Norway, at least for a week, even better for two and best with a caravan. You can find many charming little campsites in villages, valleys, by the water and in the forest in Norway.
All engines are supplied with an 8-speed automatic transmission and 4x4 drive. Connoisseurs can further enhance the chassis with air suspension with rear wheel steering for better maneuverability when parking in the city and at the same time better handling, agility on country roads. The most demanding motorists will certainly reach for active stabilizers, which suppress body roll in corners and increase the stability of a large SUV at high speed on the highway.
Compared to the Touareg, the Cayenne also has twice the capacity of the plug-in hybrid traction battery, thanks to which it can travel up to 90 km in electric mode on a single charge, while the Touareg only has a range of 40 to 50 km. Porsche can afford this because its customers will pay for the platform modification themselves, while the Touareg would be significantly more expensive to do so.
The biggest technological change in the facelift comes with the new HD LED matrix lights, which take the quality and precision of lighting the area in front of the car to a completely new level. It could be said lightly that after they are lit, day breaks in front of the car. While before the facelift, the Touareg had only 24 separately electronically controlled LED segments, after the facelift only the middle cone contains up to 19,200 micro LEDs (both lights together then 38,400), thanks to which it can illuminate the area in front of the car in the smallest detail and at the same time very precisely sculpt cars and objects in the opposite direction. The outer module then has an additional 16 LED segments for lighting the area directly in front of the car and additional high beams. The inner segments contain lights for static and dynamic cornering. In connection with the new lighting technology, the headlights with the logo in the grille have also been connected by a continuous thin LED line, following the example of other VW models. The designers also used the connection between the logo and the lights at the rear, including backlighting the rear logo, but in red.
The Norwegian fjords, rightly called works of art of nature, attract thousands of tourists to the northwestern coast of Norway every year. You can find more than a thousand of them in Norway. But I started my tour on the famous Atlantic Ocean Road, where part of the last James Bond episode "No Time to Die" was filmed. The 8.2 km long road connecting several islands with the mainland is one of the most breathtaking places on the old continent, where you can freely drive by car, and even free of charge. If you are lucky with good weather, which the cameraman and I eventually managed to do, you will enjoy amazing scenery. In bad weather, you can be blown away by strong gusts of wind, or the crossing can be complicated by high ocean waves hitting the road.
Our base for three days in Norway was the former farming town of Molde, which was never a fishing port, but today is used by large ocean liners during the season. From Molde, the second day we headed southeast from the ocean into the mountains to experience the fjords from a different perspective, more from above.
The paradox is that you can only "load" the chassis of the classic combustion engine versions with additional technology. Unfortunately, the most powerful and fastest Touareg R cannot be equipped with either rear-wheel steering or active stabilizers due to the plug-in hybrid drive and the floor installation in connection with the hybrid components. Of the SUV models of the VW concern with the same technical basis, only the Porsche Cayenne can do this, which has a completely overhauled platform and arrangement of the hybrid drive components.
But let's get back to Volkswagen. As part of the modernization, the technicians recalibrated the air suspension in an attempt to achieve greater differences between comfort and sport. So that the Touareg would be a little more supple in comfort mode, more deliciously swallowing bumps and at the same time controlling the body movements more precisely in sport mode. At the same time, the technicians connected the chassis control electronics with new roof load sensors in the roof rails, which can recognize whether you have a roof box or other load anchored on the roof. With a loaded roof, the electronics intervene more in crisis situations, more vigilant about the stability of the car, and without a load, on the contrary, it is more benevolent towards dynamic and sporty driving. It leaves you more freedom.
