The VW Tiguan, Seat Ateca and Skoda Kodiaq are all built on the MQB platform shared with Golf, Leon and Octavia - presently the Tiguan and Ateca are SWB 5-seaters and the Kodiaq is LWB 7-seater but shortly there will be LWB Tiguan and Ateca and SWB Kodiaq added to their ranges.

My mileage, in a diesel Touareg, is a mixture of short trips and long runs, nothing in between - during periods with short runs the DPF regeneration is noticeable and it does hit the already poor urban fuel consumption.

If you do very low mileage, consider a 1-2 year old Touareg - depreciation has been mammoth as a) a new version is out this autumn, b) VW dieselgate and c) the UK anti-diesel campaign - so they're available with low mileage and factory warranty for silly low money - the fuel consumption won't win any prizes but at low mileages that would be hardly noticeable - it's more spacious than any of the MQB cars, as you'd expect

Edited by RT on 12/08/2017 at 18:02

We have had 2 diesels with DPFs and have not done the type af annual mileage recommended BUT a majority of of journeys were 15 to 20 mile each way commutes. We never had an issue in the 10 years we owned the cars and covered approx 80,000 miles in total.

One thing we quickly learned was you cannot trigger a regen simply by driving for twenty miles. The car will decide when a regen is required and once triggered and the engine is up to temp and you are doing a suitable speed it will start. On the BMW it was about every 650 miles and you could only detect it by the different noise the car made between gear changes. On the Kia it was every 250 miles and was easilly spotted by a very high and lumpy idle and slighly uneven running at speed. On both cars the instant mpg plumetted by about 1/2 during a regen.

All taking the car out "for a twenty mile burn up every week/ten days" will achive is to lighten your wallet by a small sum of money and block up the DPF quicker. BMW and Kia recommended that during a regen you keep the revs between 1800 and 2000 to reduce the regen time. High revs mean a high gas speed through the DPF and this can prevent it reaching the 600 degrees needed.

I consider we were lucky not to have an issue which is why we both drive petrols now. With your planned usage buying a diesel would be absolutely barking.

If a petrol Tiguan fits the bill be prepared to wait for it coming. A 4 month wait is better than many years of regret and huge bills.