When the Cornflower Blue 2022 Volkswagen Taos arrived in my driveway, I thought it was cute. It was bright, petite, clean, but this is the same driveway where a Hyundai Palisade recently replaced a Mercedes-Benz GLK due to a growing family. I didn’t expect to be impressed by the size of the Taos.
But then I had to put a car seat in it. I put my son’s high-back booster seat on the passenger side. Usually, he’s the one I need to take somewhere, and putting his seat curbside facilitates school and camp drop-offs and pick-ups.
Putting this necessarily bulky car seat into smaller vehicles can be tricky — it requires angling to get it into the car, and then into place on the seat cushion. In the Taos, I was able to just plop the seat right in with no finagling. The door entry is tall and wide, and the ceiling is high enough not to impede the headrest. I was also able to easily reach over and around the seat to strap it in using the seat belt. Nice.
Later in the week, the less-often-necessary task of installing my daughter’s infant car seat fell upon me. For this, I installed the seat base behind the driver’s seat using the lower LATCH anchors. Instead of being hidden behind leather or fabric, these anchors are unmissable behind large plastic covers. The large anchor housings made clipping the tethers a breeze. Even better, I didn’t have to find a place to stash the covers — they flip up and out of the way, stowing themselves, still connected, within the top of the opening.
Perfect, but I’d still have to make room for myself sitting in front of the rear-facing seat, right?
Nope! That rear seat is deceptively roomy. As such, I, a 6-foot-tall man with long legs, didn’t have to move my seat forward a single millimeter from my ideal driving position. This is rare even for midsize and even some full-size SUVs. I was flabbergasted in the best way. I was starting to fall in love with this little crossover.
Incredibly, that generous second row doesn’t spell disaster for the rear cargo volume. It’s still spacious, as you can see in the photo below.
Still not convinced? Check out Senior Editor James Riswick’s VW Taos luggage test — though the front-wheel-drive version does afford a slight edge in cargo space compared to the better-to-drive 4Motion. He also put his own Britax Boulevard convertible car seat (bigger than either of mine and pictured above right), and found the exact same shocking amount of space. The giant car seat was easy to place inside and there was a surprising amount of room left up front. It was actually far better than his 2013 BMW X5, which is a midsize SUV.
Honestly, it’s a little spooky. The Taos feels larger on the inside that it is on the outside. It reminds me of Mark Z. Danielewski’s genre-defying novel, The House of Leaves, which gave me nightmares after reading it. The Taos, on the other hand, made me feel warm and fuzzy. In addition to being shockingly spacious, it was a joy to drive and easy to use. Even better, I’m now armed with a small crossover I can legitimately recommend to two-child households. Heck, I’d even recommend it over the larger Tiguan.
Besides, the world could use more Cornflower Blue in it.
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