Watch Gallons Of Trapped Water Drain Out Of Early VW Group SUVs

Do you ever hear a watery sloshing noise when you pull your car up at the kerb, or at traffic lights? Maybe it’s just the petrol tank… or maybe it’s several gallons of water hiding inside your bodywork.

Owners of first-generation Volkswagen Touaregs, as well as the Audi A7s and Porsche Cayennes based on the same platform, have been reporting vast quantities of water getting caught inside the chassis. Videos of the draining process have been picked up by Jalopnik, and they’re jaw-dropping.

In the first couple of clips you can see the insane amount of water that flows freely out of an early Touareg and a MkI Cayenne. How exactly the water is getting in there seems to be up for debate, but it builds up over a period of years until there’s a small child’s worth of extra weight swirling and sloshing around inside your car’s hollow bits.

The problem on these cars isn’t limited to the hollow sills. More videos are out there showing the small pond’s worth of liquid, leaves and other crap that builds up in the drains that descend from ahead of the windscreen.

When they’re not cleared out regularly, they block, back up and can force water to enter the cabin via the footwell. Wet shoes, anyone?

The Touareg, Q7 and Cayenne all look like bargains in the classifieds, now that emissions regs and fuel costs have made cars like that so undesirable. But, if you do buy one… clean out the drains ASAP.