The Volkswagen Sharan is a smart, stylish seven-seat MPV that hides its size well. The VW family styling, immediately familiar from the Volkswagen Golf and Volkswagen Polo, does a neat job of tricking the brain into thinking that this purposeful people carrier is smaller and, therefore, more nimble than its rivals.
The Sharan comes with a choice of four engines – one petrol and two diesel. The bigger sellers will be the diesels – 2.0-litre units with a choice of 148bhp and 181bhp outputs. Although the 181bhp unit is usefully quicker, it’s less refined around town, with marginally more noise and vibration being evident from the driver’s seat. It also offers the temptation to be driven in a less economical fashion. Both, however, are impressively refined on the motorway.
The only available petrol engine is the 148bhp 1.4 TSI which, like the diesels, is now familiar across the Volkswagen Group’s ranges.
It is extremely smooth and refined, although lacks torque lower down the rev range; it can feel underpowered with a full load of passengers on board and requires frequent gearchanging to keep the revs above 4000rpm when you want to make progress or overtake. It may come with temptingly frugal official economy figures and a low CO2 output, but in real-world driving the smallest capacity engine ends up working so hard they’re near-impossible to achieve.
However, the Sharan is not the kind of vehicle that you’d want to hustle around and there’s no getting away from the fact that this Volkswagen will not be the choice of the committed driver. It very quickly begins to understeer if you’re too fast into bends and the steering, too, is a touch vague at the straight-ahead on the motorway, although it weights up well off centre.
