An unusual name, Touareg. It sounds like an anagram. Either that or a long-forgotten Steeleye Span B-side. The allusion, however, is to a nomadic tribe from the Sahara who, if they stop anywhere for long enough, may or may not be flattered to discover that VW has named its first ever sports utility vehicle in their honour.
Does today's Saharan nomad get about the place in a thick-wheeled off-roader? And if he does, would he choose the Touareg over, say, the Land Rover Discovery or the Toyota Land Cruiser? Or would he prefer to budget for something a bit more cut-price, such as the Subaru Forester or the Kia Sorento? Or would he push the boat out, as it were, and join the waiting lists for the new, hugely pleasurable and - for a sheep-flattener - extremely handsome Volvo XC90?
These are the questions that VW will be nervously asking itself, having turned up unfashionably late at the SUV party, to find the room already jam-packed and smoky. SUVs are a burgeoning type at the moment, and it's going to take a particularly clever new one to create some space around itself.
The Touareg certainly draws the eye. You could even say it blocks the sun. It squats chunky and proud on the road, a Tonka Toy to your average saloon car's Matchbox. You hoist yourself into the front seat like a driver climbing aboard an old steam train.
And, like a steam train, it seems to catch the popular imagination. It may just have been the electric-blue paintwork, but a lot of pedestrians stopped to watch me go by. Or, at any rate, to jump back out of the way of my passing wing-mirrors, which each had roughly the shape and heft of a microwave oven travelling at 30mph.
The quality of the attention, and the general goodwill within it, was unusual because commonly, in an urban setting, an SUV attracts more resentment than curiosity. There is no getting round this, just as there is no getting round an SUV. They are presumed to be driven by people who have formed an unpleasantly self-important picture of what might be involved in getting their children to school. They are widely held to be the essence of unnecessary in an obnoxiously unignorable package. It cannot be denied that they are also, in many cases, a complete sham. They appear tough and functional and aggressively point their bumpers at the heads of other road users, as if to say: "Do you want some?" At the same time, nearly all of them are weedy monocoque constructions and would snap in half if you so much as brushed them against a hedge.
Clearly, the Touareg will, if asked, play the part of the suburban run-about - and do so very powerfully and quietly. And clearly it is in the interests of VW's sales figures that this should be the case. My Touareg was full of leather and walnut and all sorts of other fancy trimmings that you would not automatically be keen to let a wet gun dog lie down on.
Even the boot was thickly carpeted, as if to receive company, rather than rubberised for mucky pups. When I put a sack of fertiliser in the back, it felt wrong somehow - like mending a bicycle in the sitting room.
But to be a bit of posh in a built-up area is not the limit of the Touareg's ambitions. It may well come with automatic suspension that rides up and down according to how hard you are driving. And it's true that overall the car will essentially drive on electronic autopilot - a tacit admission that many of its owners will never bother to learn what most of its buttons do.
At the same time, though, it genuinely offers something for the person who lives in the hills. It has rollback and descent controls for those forehead-to-the-windscreen slopes where mere brakes alone won't do. Its six-speed automatic V6 engine clearly has the guts to do battle with a ploughed field on a mountainside, and in the snow if necessary. The permanent four-wheel drive can be routed to send all the power to one wheel, enabling you to blast your way out of trouble in the event that you get bogged down at one corner.
It is muscular enough to tow 7,700lb, which is a fair few cows. And it will clear, to within an inch, two feet of water - which is a fair few fords. Plus the underside at the front and back is raked to a radical 28 degrees, so you can clatter on to a significant hump without tearing the bottom of the car off. And there's an all-round ultrasound parking aid to let you know when you're getting too close to the school gates. Sorry, I mean too close to the dry-stone wall. The competition is still out there. But the Touareg has the capacity to nudge it aside, settle down and create a niche of its own.
