Volkswagen Sharan SE 2.0 TDI DSG Automatic

This has to be juicy material for the update, I say to myself, as that weird noise starts off again. It sounds like the mating call of an electronic sheep, and it’s triggered by sleeping policemen, dormant potholes and even dead leaves, if the pile is thick enough. A mystery sound in a Volkswagen has to be a story, especially if you’re as old as me and can remember that Golf ad about the driver who panicked when a squeak arose but, rest ye easy oh mighty gods of tecknich, eventually discovered it was just his girlfriend’s swivelling earring.

Could our Sharan be about to reveal VW’s Kraft is on the slide? Well schadenfreudists, look away now. I’m afraid the problem was eventually isolated to an area under the front passenger seat where one of the children had lovingly jettisoned one of those infernal plastic toys McDonald’s give them each time they visit (thus ensuring parents have no choice but to return, ad nausea). Said toy issues a bizarre electronic roar at the slightest vibration. It’d provide hours of fun hidden under a Ryanair seat.

So there we are, excitement over. Another incredibly dull month at the Sharan’s wheel. We’ve clocked past 5,000 miles, but I could hardly tell you much about them. It is, in truth, a self-driving car, providing driving abilities with such a level of efficiency that you, the driver, are pretty much ballast.

The redeeming element to all that though is that it’s exactly what I desire from my daily wheels. If you come up behind a dawdler in the Sharan, see a gap and give it maximum encouragement, it does the job like a civil servant: efficiently and without drama. Granted, it doesn’t exert such wallop as to threaten to send you to a chiropractor, or induce palpitations of pleasure. But (and this is a tricky point to impress upon die-hard drivers) the pleasure of motoring often exists more in the centre of the driving seat, rather than its edge. Make no mistake: the Sharan is brilliant at box ticking. It carries seven adults and a decent amount of luggage without any need to park in the Loading Only bay. It delivers refinement that stops short of suffocation and is the best looking MPV out there. Maybe above all though, it’s economical. As the miles notch ever upward, we’re seeing nearly 45mpg from our Volkswagen now, even with those clumpy winter tyres.

As a housekeeping footnote, I’d like to modify my remarks about the unpredictable on-off nature of the auto-hold handbrake, which comes as standard kit. I’ve now discovered why it was working only when it apparently could be bothered. You need to have your safety belt on before ignition. This raises an argument over whether everyone would suit such a protocol: it’s not, after all, a legal requirement to have a belt on while reversing and many drivers hate to do so. But it does show how one old-fashioned adage is still true: read the flipping manual.