Win Fun on 4-Wheels with a Volkswagen T-Cross 85TSI Style

Draw Three of Mater Cars for Cancer gives you the chance to win ‘Fun on 4-Wheels’, in the shape of a Volkswagen T-Cross 85TSI Style worth $36,657. VW’s smallest SUV has been a long time coming yet could be in your driveway in May for the price of a $30.00 ticket.

The VW T-Cross is a relatively new nameplate in Australia having landed on our shores in early 2020, but the concept goes back at least 10 years. Volkswagen saw potential in a tiny little SUV and greenlit the VW Taigun concept in 2012, but four years into development, the VW Up!-based project was cancelled. Research determined they’d leaned into the ‘tiny little SUV’ notion just a tad too heavily and their Taigun was simply too small a car.

It’s almost inconceivable that VW would cancel a vehicle so late in the development process; with a 2016 release date, the original Taigun would have been almost production ready. But the Up! on which it was based was as small as it was cool, and an SUV based on Up! underpinnings would have been almost comical. VW’s unexpected but astute course-correction was to our benefit, because although you can never own a Taigun, you could own the car that replaced it; the 2022 VW T-Cross, for the price of a lottery ticket.

This time based on the Polo platform rather than the Up!, the T-Cross remains VW’s smallest SUV, but that doesn’t mean it’s a clown car. The five-seater packs in plenty of features for its diminutive size, such as an 8” touchscreen infotainment system compatible with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, wireless phone charging and a DAB digital radio with six-speaker sound. The driver gets a leather-bound steering wheel and more importantly for those sitting on the left, the climate control is dual zone; no more arguments about the set-and-forget!

The T-Cross is no Tesla, but it’s not far off the Draw Two prize, despite a lack of battery power. Driven at the front wheels via a seven-speed automatic gearbox coupled to a thrifty 1.0 litre turbo petrol triple cylinder engine, the T-Cross zips through traffic with ease. All models get paddle shifters for 2022, so if rowing your own gears is your bag, you can do so at the flick of a finger. It returns an official economy figure of 5.4L/100kms, averaged between both city and country driving which, to be fair, is only slightly above nothing. Again, that’s no Tesla, but it’s not far off!

Safety stuff is super-important in any car these days and the T-Cross has it in spades with sharp, LED headlights with auto-on, rain-sensing wipers, keyless entry/engine start, adaptive cruise control, reversing camera, parking sensors, blind spot monitoring and rear cross-traffic alert. The T-Cross also benefits from lane-keep assist and lane-departure warnings, plus city-speed autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection. And if it all goes pear-shaped, there’s front, front-side, curtain and driver’s knee airbags.

Things going pear-shaped happens in life; sometimes it’s a car crash, other times it’s cancer. And when it is the latter, rest assured the dollars you spend on a ticket in a Mater Cars for Cancer lottery go towards those actively looking for a cure for cancer, as well as assistance for those currently suffering it. If you’re one of the lucky ones, you’ll never need an organisation like Mater. Or maybe you’ll find yourself winner of Draw Three of Mater Cars for Cancer Lottery 104 and be having Fun on 4-Wheels by winter.