Total Smackdown! Volkswagen Sharan v Citroen C4 Grand Picasso Review

*Guest post by my husband, DD!

As some of you might know, my wife's office is currently our trusty 3+ year old Citroen C4 Grand Picasso. We bought him in 2012 off the second-hand market just before little Nomi’s 1st birthday, and were really rather pleased with the purchase. Apart from the intermittent problem of Unresponsive-Power-Windows-Surfacing-At-Inconvenient-Moments, our C4 Grand Picasso -- let’s call him Pablo -- has served our family well. And, although we are not in the market for a new car to replace good ol' Pablo (notwithstanding aforesaid Problem), we were very grateful for Volkswagen’s offer to let us have the Sharan for a week.

By the way:

• You may already have read some reviews of the Volkswagen Sharan here or here or here. 
• You can also read the technical specifications of the Sharan at Volkswagen’s website (and can I just say at this time, these are mighty impressive specs! 8.5 secs 0-100kph, amongst other things). 

So this review will offer something different – a review of the Sharan (let’s call her Sandy) compared with Pablo.

The Cars

Here are the cars, side by side.

Both are happy cars.

Sandy the Sharan looks a little smaller here but that is because of my cunning photography. Actually, side by side, Sandy is quite a bit longer and a fair bit wider than Pablo. As you will see in the next pic, there is a bit more space in the middle rows for the kids in Sandy than in Pablo:

For comparison, here are the kids in their usual positions in Pablo

Here they are in Sandy. Plenty of room for the person in the middle, even when hemmed in by two car seats.

Note the sliding doors, which creates space.

Comfortable amount of leg room too, even when the seats are not fully pushed back. Enough for Naomi to mess around anyway.

One of the best features of Sandy is its OPENING SUNROOF! The kids of course loved this feature.

Standing tall.

I received, but did not grant, Noey’s many many many requests to allow him to poke his head out of the sunroof while the car is in motion. But if you can’t actually do that (to feel like a tank commander in make believe land) then what good is an opening sunroof? This got me thinking – is an opening sunroof better than a regular one? The answer is, probably yes. Here are the reasons:

Advantages of Opening Sunroof:

• Good ventilation while car is moving.
• Allows hot air to escape faster if parked under the sun for a while.

Disadvantages of Opening Sunroof:

• If you’re unlucky birds might poop right into your cabin.
• It creates unnecessary feelings of longing for poking one’s head out while car is in motion.

Soooooo… it’s very clear that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages…. Right?

By the way, for those of you who are interested in measuring things: Sandy the Sharan’s sunroof measures approx 115cm X 70cm, while Pablo Picasso’s sunroof measures 85cm X 80 cm. That said, both sunroofs are huge, and both let in large amounts of light into the cabin.

Next feature of the Sharan is… Automatic Everything

Seriously, the Sharan has Automatic Everything. Automatic keyless entry, automatic sliding doors, automatic boot, automatic volume regulation (music volume is moderated to engine ambient sound so that the volume is always just right – impressive!), automatic parking, automatic child lock, automatic side/curve lighting, and automatic almost anything else you can think of. The car even automatically parks itself with Park Assist if you really need it to.

Automatic everything except one thing… Sandy does not come equipped with an automatic fuel door. On Pablo, a button is pressed to open the fuel compartment. I was trying to look for the same thing on Sandy but to no avail. Not one of the 56 buttons and 6 control dials could open the fuel door. I had to SMS my friend (a happy owner of a Sharan as well) to ask whether one had to use a screwdriver to pry open the fuel compartment! After some dismissive words from my friend I was educated on the oh-so-simple push-release mechanism.

Button heaven for Automatic Operation of Everything Conceivable.

Nice sleek Driver-side door panel

Dashboard. Notice the steering wheel conveniently has buttons too.

Start and stop the car with, yes, the push of a button.

There's even a button to automatically close the rear door. No need for slamming here.

The Drive

Speaking of my good friend who also owns a Sharan (erm, let’s call him… Jeep), when Mummybean told me that we would be getting Sandy on loan for a week, I asked him for some tips on handling the Sharan. You know, whether it had any particular handling characteristics, eg. whether there was body roll when turning corners.

Jeep (excellent lawyer he is, by the way) excitedly told me that he was very ^{(to the power of 100)} happy with the Sharan and that it was a great upgrade from the Touran. As for turning corners, his immortal words were “I take corners at 80kmh, no problem!”. My other colleagues who were there and overheard these words couldn’t believe it – either Jeep (excellent lawyer) was bluffing or worse, a crazy driver. Both were unthinkable. Anyway if anyone sees a chestnut brown Sharan take the Telok Kurau exit at 80kmh, that’s my friend Jeep. Say hi to him for me.

My experience is that the Sharan’s drive is impeccable. It feels very planted and solid but yet ultra responsive. That said, I didn’t try any corners at 80kmh (or higher) and I will have to connect you to my good friend Jeep if you want an opinion on that. For the corners that I did take, handling was impeccable and precise and it is not necessary to make steering micro-adjustments while turning corners which is a common problem on many cars including Pablo.

And Sandy has lots of power too. 0-100kmh in 8.5 seconds, max torque of 280Nm at 1700rpm, with an engine churning out power of 200 finely tuned horses.

So the Sharan is really no slouch. In fact, if one floors the pedals from a stationary position, power is transmitted so aggressively that the wheels spin before traction is obtained and the car spears forward leaving the other mortal cars behind.

And yet, Sandy’s drive is remarkably quiet compared to Pablo. The cabin is well insulated from engine buzz and external ambient sound and one does not have to compete with them to speak or be heard. In Pablo it is a slightly different story because engine noise is noticeable though not loud, and all in all Sandy delivers a more refined driving experience.

As for fuel consumption, for the time I had Sandy, her 2.0l engine delivered similar numbers to 1.6l Pablo at around 7-8km per litre. My friend Jeep however reports lower fuel efficiency on his Sharan (around 5-6 km/l) and the difference could be that I did have several relatively long cruising journeys with Sandy, otherwise normal city traffic would have been far less fuel efficient.

The cons

So, having said all that, does Sandy the Sharan trump Pablo Picasso in every respect? The answer is no, and I’ll just give 2 examples.

First, on the comfort front, Sandy lacks armrests for the driver and front passenger seats.

No armrest for driver’s left arm/front passenger’s right arm. Said arms will be in limbo (ahem couldn’t resist)

This might not seem like much but armrests are actually quite useful and comfortable. It would have been better if Sandy had them.

Also, Pablo’s front seats are also a bit more comfortable than Sandy’s, being contoured better to the shape of the human body than Sandy’s.

Second, and this was the ONLY thing that actually annoyed me about driving Sandy, is that Sandy has over-excited parking proximity sensors. They start beeping nervously from 10 feet away and increase in volume and pitch, reaching maximum calamity mode even if you have a safety distance of 10-12 inches between the side mirrors and next pillar.

And don’t even try parking within 6 inches of the side mirrors because the sensors will screech and scream and threaten immediate bomb detonation unless you BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP MOVE AWAY MOVE AWAY MOVE AWAY. Needless to say I found it not so enjoyable to park Sandy in narrow-ish lots.

Pictures!

Before I conclude, here are some more pictures of Sandy:

Ample boot space, with the last row of seats folded down.  

Absolutely Noey's favourite thing to do: slide the automatic doors close. And open. And close. And open...

Can we keep this car, please?

Our favourite Sharan!

Conclusion

Apart from the two minor issues above, Sandy is in all respects a more refined car than Pablo. To put it in perspective though, she does cost a cool 80 grand more than Pablo, so one would expect that measure of quality. Whether the 80 grand is worth it, however, is very much a subjective thing and each person’s mileage may vary.

I’ve heard from some sources that one of the reasons why the take up rate for the Sharan is slower than other similar cars is the pricing, and I am inclined to agree. However, you do get what you pay for and the Sharan in the MPV market really is second to none so there is a good reason for the price it commands. As for me, although Sandy is beyond my budget (warning: shameless plug coming!), I can certainly dream of owning one…. and if Volkswagen can give me a nice discount I’ll say thank you in advance! Hah. But seriously, thanks Volkswagen for letting us have the use of the Sharan.

If there are any queries on the Sharan I’ll be happy to do a Q&A/FAQs for fans of this blog, just leave a comment and I’ll add to this post to answer any questions you might have.

*Thanks to Volkswagen for the use of the Volkswagen Sharan TSI 2.0 for a week for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain strictly our own.