Comfortablynumb – answers to questions as follows;
IQ Lights – The R Line comes with LED lights, which are pretty powerful but essentially ‘fixed’, other than bending lights when cornering. Intelligent fully adaptive lights (such as iQ) are very clever. You essentially drive on full beam the whole time and when cars approach, or are ahead of you, a camera tells the headlights to ‘cut out’ that vehicle from the beam, leaving the rest of the beam on full. As the oncoming vehicle passes, the ‘blacked out’ bit fills back in, as if by magic. They usually work over around 30 mph and don’t work in areas with street lights. If you’ve never had them you won’t miss them and if you don’t do much nighttime driving I’d say they aren’t a show stopper – but I’d miss them as I’ve had them on the last 2 cars (although the VW ones are a bit slow to react compared to the BMW version).
Electric Tailgate – If the Tiguan price and spec guide is correct, the new R Line has a manual tailgate, which surprises me. It has remote unlocking, but not remote opening. I find that strange, so someone who has a new one might correct this. On the Elegance it is fully electric, opening and closing, with the additional ability to open hands free by waving your foot underneath the rear of the car.
Panoramic Sunroof – I would never pay for one as an option as they are silly prices, and I very rarely open ours, but the main advantage is all the light that floods into the car, which is very nice. The Tiguan roof is pretty good in that if you open it a screen goes up to stop the buffeting that you get with many other sunroofs. An important note though. The R Line has black headlining. I really dislike those as they make the cabins very oppressive. If you have a sunroof (as the old R Line Tech did) then it’s not an issue, but without I would find it a problem. Ironically, it wouldn’t be so bad not having one in the Elegance as it has a light grey headlining, but it’s standard! They do creak very slightly on very cold mornings until the car warms up.
Rear View Camera – The Tiguan one is very poor. The clarity is OK but not great and the lens is just undue the tailgate handle and as SUV rears get filthy, it is almost always covered in dirt. I’d rather have it than not, but again it’s not a show stopper with front and rear sensors.
Some other differences to be aware of;
The R Line is full body colour. The Elegance has ugly grey skirts along the bottom of both sides. If you have a grey one (as we do) they are invisible as the car looks fully painted. Any other colour and they show.
The R Line has touch sensitive steering wheel controls, rather than the conventional buttons that the Elegance has. These touch sensitive controls have had very poor reviews as you can inadvertently trigger a function.
The seat fabric in the new R Line won’t be to everyone’s taste. Think 1980’s Golf GTI. With the Elegance you can have black or Storm Grey, which we have at present (albeit in leather) and that looks fantastic as it’s two tone. Pale centre panels in the seats with black side bolsters and head restraints. Looks really classy (unlike the R Line ?).
If renewing now and the old model was still out, I would have gone for the R Line Tech, as long as I could have got a decent engine. Now, I would go for the Elegance. The new R Line wheels aren’t as nice as the old one IMO and it no longer looks like the flagship model – a position that it now shares jointly with the Elegance.
A final note, regardless of model. The colour choice is pants. VW only offer the dullest of dull colours on the Tiguan. I was excited about Nightshade Blue until I saw one. It is absolutely nothing whatsoever like the colour depicted in the brochures. It is a dark petrol blue. Check out photos on Autotrader for a more accurate depiction. Great shame as if it looked anything like it does in the brochure it would be fab!