The Volkswagen Touareg is one of many mid-to-large SUVs available for families in the US. A larger counterpart to the Tiguan, it competes with a range of 2-row crossovers, including the Nissan Murano, Ford Edge, Dodge Journey, Kia Sorento, Hyundai Santa Fe, Chevrolet Equinox, GMC Terrain, Jeep Cherokee, and Jeep Grand Cherokee. It shares the same platform as the Audi Q7, which stands to reason since both are ultimately made by Volkswagen. In 2017, it was replaced in the US market with the slightly larger Atlas, which I review here.

As a result, the Touareg is frequently considered by families interested in safe and capable transportation, particularly when there’s a need for impressive towing capabilities. I took a look at the Touareg across both generations to figure out how well of a job it does when it comes to installing 3 car seats in the back row. The Touareg comes with great safety features, including good moderate overlap front and side crash scores, a strong roof, ESC, side airbags with rollover sensors, and daytime running lights. These are all features every vehicle made in this century should have, but when it comes to car seats, we don’t want to assume things will work because the vehicles themselves are good.

Before we figure out which seats I was and was not able to make work in the Touareg, let’s take a look at which kinds of seats should be used, when they should be used, for how long, and why. If you know all of this already, feel free to skip down to the guides below.

For me, car seat safety starts with rear-facing. It’s the safest position we know of, and the longer our kids rear-face, the safer they’ll be, regardless of what kind of vehicle they travel in. I recommend keeping children in rear-facing infant or convertible seats as long as possible (ideally until 4!), then keeping them harnessed in forward-facing seats for several years more (ideally until 8!), and then only switching them out of booster seats when they pass the 5 step test (which typically happens between 10 and 12). The goal is to keep kids in the safest kinds of seats for as long as possible to increase their odds of surviving serious car crashes.

With that all in mind, I got to work with my seats to create what I believe to be the most detailed 3 across guide for the Volkswagen Touareg on the Internet. If you find the list helpful when shopping for car seats, you can shop through my Amazon link below. I’ll add more seats as I test them over time.

You can access the complete 3 across guide for every vehicle here and the complete list of recommended seats here. The Canadian car seat guide is here. 3 across car seat images are taken by yours truly or are courtesy of Wikipedia.