High and mighty: VW Tiguan R vs Mercedes-AMG GLB 35

So what exactly are these cars? Fast, for one thing. The Tiguan R is the marginally more potent and accelerative of the two, but each pairs more than 300bhp from a 2.0-litre turbo engine with four-wheel drive and a dual-clutch automatic gearbox. Both will smash 60mph in around five seconds, and both cabins are replete with the kind of heavily bolstered seats and perforated steering wheels and shiny pedals you’d expect to find only in something seriously quick. The duo’s exterior design doesn’t leave any room for interpretation, either. Radiator vanes are threateningly visible through open-worked bumpers and brakes glint from behind manhole-cover alloys that fit snug inside wheel arches beefed up with plastic cladding. If they were people, these two would be dedicated-to-their-family types but with lengthy criminal records.

They would have expensive tastes, too. You’ll receive little change from £50,000 for the Volkswagen and none at all for the Mercedes, so the several-cars-in-one proposition they each offer is very much priced in. As a reference point, the 385bhp V6-engined Mercedes-AMG C43 Estate costs just under £53,000. Permission to wince granted.

Slide aboard easily and you’ll find the Mercedes wears its asking price more confidently than the Volkswagen. In the UK, the GLB 35 comes only in top-level Premium Plus trim, which includes the parallel 10.3in displays and more amenities than you could want. Beyond the slight chintz of metal-dipped plastics, this cabin simply feels more premium and plush in both its materials and layout. The seats are a bit ordinary, especially compared with the VW’s Alcantara-trimmed semi-buckets, and they squeeze my thighs together too enthusiastically, but the enveloping GLB otherwise seems made for cosy big-distance drives. In ergonomic terms, it also has one seat-related trick up its exhaust: space for seven. It’s an ungainly beast from almost every angle, but below that square roofline you can get two children in the folding third row.

In contrast, the VW feels spacious and airy, which is confusing. A sense of loftiness is welcome in a straightforward SUV but it’s not necessarily what you want in a performance car, and the Tiguan R wants to be both those things. Perhaps that’s why it feels disjointed after sitting in the GLB 35, which is also spacious but whose seats are more low-slung in relation to the chunky scuttle and whose ambience is much more mature and car-like.

The driving position in the VW is awkwardly upright. It even feels a long way down to reach for the utility-grade gearlever. The go-faster elements, which include very prominent gearshift paddles, exist in conflict with this architecture – imagine having a white tablecloth and mahogany chairs in McDonald’s. It’d be unconvincing and unsettling, and so it is with the slightly plasticky confines of Tiguan.

However, there’s no denying the sheer second-row capaciousness of either car. If you’re three- or four-up with any regularity, your passengers will thank you for having one of these crossovers instead of either the Golf R or AMG A35. And that’s strike one.

Equally undeniable is the pace of the Volkswagen, which not only has that 99kg weight advantage over the Mercedes but with 310lb ft also makes more torque, and makes it earlier on, from a scant 2100rpm.

To make the most of the drivetrain, you need to get the car into either Sport or Race mode, at which point the piped-in noise sounds, in the poetry of fellow road tester James Disdale, “like a Subaru flat four with a manifold leak that’s been sampled through a ZX Spectrum”. But boy is this thing quick. What becomes apparent is that rather than creating a unique character for the Tiguan R, Volkswagen has attempted to transplant into it the personality of the Golf R wholesale. It means that as well as being relentlessly accelerative, this crossover is also more agile and direct than you’re probably expecting, and the body control enabled by the standard-fit adaptive dampers is uncanny. What also helps is the new R Performance torque-vectoring set-up, which sandwiches the rear differential with electromechanical clutch packs that siphon drive from wheel to wheel – potentially all of what the driveline can make available to the rear, which at any given moment is half the engine’s total output. This ability to bias the outside rear wheel works alongside the front axle’s XDS ‘differential lock’ system, which is nothing of the sort but can if necessary use the ESP to brake the inside wheel during hard cornering.