It will manage fine. Obviously it won't drive like a sports car, but will have no difficulty in keeping up with traffic etc. Fuel consumption won't be great, but anything similar with a petrol engine will be much the same.

Don't worry too much about the engine size. The turbo means it has easily as much power (and more torque) than the 2 litre engines which were used in big family cars previously.

We've recently done a holiday trip carrying a family of 4, luggage for a week, 2 bikes and 3 boats with a 1.0 TSI Leon Estate. That is a 1.4 tonne car so in the overall scheme of things not that much lighter than the Sharan and with a less powerful engine. The car was a bit slower than when empty, I had to work the gears a bit on motorway slip roads, and it used a bit more fuel, but this was fully loaded and with a big trailer and a roof rack!!

As long as your expectations of performance are in line with what is on offer, it will manage absolutely fine.

With regards to the weight, that does seem to vary from source to source. My usual "go to" website for stats says 1628kg for the 1.4TSI, the HJ website says 1703kg.

When dealing with a heavy car, what you need is a decent slug of torque, at low revs. That is important, because if the torque isn't available at low revs, you will end up having to wring it's neck getting up to speed. So yes, it does have 185lb/ft of torque, but the fact that this is available from only 1500rpm is more important.

Here are couple of other points to consider. When the Sharan first appeared, the base engines were a 90bhp 1.9 turbo diesel and a 115bhp 2.0 (non turbo) petrol. The torque figures were 149lb/t @ 1900rpm and 122lb/ft @ 3600rpm respectively.

I worked at a VW dealer in the early noughties and drove plenty of Sharan's with these engines and (IMO) they were absolutely fine along as you are not the kind of driver who always has to be in front of everyone else.

But the bottom line is that the only person who can answer whether the 1.4TSI has enough get up and go for you, is you!. This will depend on how fast you like to drive, how hard you like to accelerate and what performance your current car has.

We have had 2 cars fitted with that engine, a Seat Leon (quite a bit smaller) and a Skoda Superb (a large barge).

In the Superb there was more than enough power to drive to Scotland and back with a full car and a full boot without needing to thrash it when overtaking on the A9. On the average week it would average about 50 mpg (calculated).

I accept that the Sharan is bigger and weighs more but I feel sure it would cope admirably in the real world.

Drive one and decide. Its a great engine.

Not sure if you are aware that these modern petrols have a small turbo that boosts from lowish rpm (about 1500) and perform nothing like a 1.4 petrol did many years ago.

Edited by SLO76 on 14/08/2024 at 10:36