2025 Volkswagen ID. Buzz GTX review: Australian first drive

A high-performance people mover may sound like an oxymoron, but Volkswagen thinks it’s an all-wheel-drive sweet spot that will resonate with Australian buyers.

The ID. Buzz GTX is the flagship sports version of the modern electric revival of the classic 1950s Kombi, which promises to build on the loyal following its hot hatchbacks, as well as Multivan people movers, have attracted in Australia.

But it comes at a cost – $109,990 before on-road costs, or about $125,000 drive-away, equivalent to nearly two Golf GTI hot hatchbacks.

The standard long-wheelbase ID. Buzz Pro is the reigning 2025 Drive Car of the Year Best Family Electric Vehicle under $100K. Does the GTX improve the breed, or is it the answer to a question no one asked?

The GTX sits at the top of the ID. Buzz range, offered in a single long-wheelbase (LWB) specification priced from $109,990 before on-road costs – or about $125,000 drive-away before options, depending on where the vehicle is registered.

That’s a cool $18,700 more than the regular, rear-wheel-drive Pro LWB, but it fits a number of features standard on the GTX: 21-inch wheels, a head-up display, Harman Kardon premium audio, leather and ArtVelours microfleece seat trim, power-adjustable front seats, a boot load platform, panoramic glass roof, and heated outboard second-row seats.

Option those items on the Pro, and the price difference closes to $5330 – a not-as-unreasonable upcharge for the second electric motor and GTX extras.

Said GTX-only features include a unique front bumper, black exterior highlights, GTX seat branding, a GTX-badged steering wheel, black headlining, red stitching, ‘sports’ suspension, and its variant-specific 21-inch wheel design.

Features shared with the Pro include a 12-inch touchscreen with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, 5.3-inch instrument display, matrix LED headlights, dual power sliding side doors, a power tailgate, wireless phone charger, 360-degree camera, heated front seats, and a full suite of advanced safety technology.

One compromise: the GTX isn’t as colourful as the regular ID. Buzz. It drops the Pro’s yellow, pastel green, orange, and bright blue tones for a range of silvers and greys, plus a red in single-tone and two-tone (with a silver roof) forms.

Direct rivals to the ID. Buzz GTX are, well, non-existent.

There are other electric people movers available, such as the LDV Mifa 9 and Mercedes-Benz eVito Tourer, but none have the character or refinement of the Volkswagen, and while $110,000 will buy a Kia EV9, it’s not as practical as a people mover.

People movers naturally have a practicality advantage compared to seven-seat SUVs, and the ID. Buzz is no different – something the GTX builds on with some sporty flair.

There’s GTX branding on the microfleece front-seat centres, red highlights and GTX badging on the steering wheel, plenty of red stitching, black headlining… and that’s about it.

It’s not overdone, nor as comprehensive in its interior changes as a Golf GTI or R compared to a normal Golf, but the red accents are a reminder of which model grade you bought.

The driving position is, naturally, van-like – positioned high, with a steering wheel angled away from you – but visibility is superb, and there’s plenty of room for tall drivers to get comfortable. The gear shifter on the stalk is easy to get your head around.

The front seats are comfortable, with heating and power adjustment as the flagship variant – plus under-thigh extensions, massaging, and lumbar control – but they’re not particularly supportive in performance driving.

The leather-trimmed steering wheel is heated, and feels nice in the hand, but Volkswagen has persisted with touch-sensitive buttons that manage to be fiddly to press accurately yet easy to accidentally activate. The heated steering wheel button, in particular, tends to be hit as you move your hands in tight corners.

Storage space is plentiful, with dual-tier door pockets (with built-in waste bins), two pop-out cupholders in the dashboard, a shelf on the dashboard, and a removable central ‘island’ with extra room to fit smaller items, and a pull-out tray accessible to rear passengers.

Hard plastics are used on the doors and dashboard, as you’d expect of a big van, but the armrests are soft, including the fold-down ones on the front seat sides. There’s a material across the dashboard that’s meant to look like wood, but sounds like the hollow plastic it is when tapped.

The first GTX we drove on the media preview was well assembled, but the second exhibited an annoying rattle from behind the driver’s side of the dashboard.

Amenities include wireless phone charging, keyless entry and start, multi-colour ambient lighting, a lockable illuminated glovebox, three front USB-C ports, tri-zone climate control, and a glass roof that can dim electrically.

Open the power-sliding side doors and you’ll find enough room in the second row of seats for my 186cm (6ft 1in) tall frame to fit behind my driving position, even when the bench is slid all the way forward. There’s plenty of head room, as well as ample toe room under the front seats.

The outboard rear seats are heated in the GTX model, plus two USB-C ports for second-row passengers, air vents in the roof with temperature controls, and tray tables that fold down from the front seatbacks.

The second row slides and folds for easy access into the third row where there is, again, lots of room – enough for me to fit behind the second-row slid all the way back, with ample knee room to be comfortable, although head room is on the tight side for those over six feet tall.

Air vents, two USB-C ports, and cupholders are on hand for third-row occupants, as well as airbag coverage extending all the way to the rearmost passengers.

Family buyers will appreciate top-tether child-seat points for all second- and third-row seats, and ISOFIX anchors for all of these positions bar the middle of the second row.

Boot space is rated at 306 litres with all three rows in place, enough for shopping bags, school bags or a few small suitcases. It’s a shallow but tall space, given the size of the car, but a load platform standard in the GTX helps raise the load height, and add a ‘shelf’ to better utilise the cargo area.

Folding the second and third rows naturally unlocks more space, and the load platform helps hide the step between the bottom of the boot floor, to the height of the folded seat backs. There are cables for connecting to a home power point or shopping-centre charging socket, but no spare wheel.

Standard in the ID. Buzz GTX is a 12-inch infotainment touchscreen shared with other new electric VWs, with digital radio, Bluetooth and voice control.

It runs Volkswagen’s latest software, which is easier to use than earlier iterations, and includes a row of customisable shortcut buttons along the top of the display, plus a further drop-down menu for vehicle functions you’d like to pin.

Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are now wireless, rather than wired as in the first batch of ID. Buzz examples to reach Australia, which can be upgraded through a dealer-installed software update. Wireless CarPlay worked without issue on test.

Volkswagen has stuck with its fiddly touch-sensitive sliders below the screen for climate controls and volume, but they are now illuminated, at least – and there is a bank of air-conditioning shortcuts along the bottom edge of the touchscreen.

Still, we’d much prefer physical buttons and dials, which would be far less distracting to use on the move.

One key omission is embedded satellite navigation, as well as AM radio. There is just FM and digital DAB support.

Ahead of the driver is a 5.3-inch display for instrumentation and key driving data such as cruise control speed, range, and the trip computer. It’s small, but it gets the job done, and the font on the speedometer is huge, so it’s easy to read at a glance.

Not that you’ll need to look at it often, as the GTX is fitted as standard with a head-up display projected onto the windscreen, which shows much of the same information.

Audio quality from the 13-speaker Harman Kardon sound system is above average, and better than the base nine-speaker stereo in the cheaper Pro variant, but the acoustics of such a big car mean it can’t hold a candle to the similarly branded systems in a Golf or Tiguan.

Five years of free access to a GoConnect phone companion app is offered, but it is limited in its functionality, without features such as a phone key, cabin pre-conditioning, or charge scheduling. It has taken some time for VW Australia to add connected-car tech to its vehicles, but the solution it has delivered is not on the level of a Tesla or other new EVs.

The Volkswagen ID. Buzz does not carry a crash-test rating from ANCAP in Australia and New Zealand, but it was awarded five stars by sister organisation Euro NCAP in 2022.

It earned category scores of 92 per cent for adult occupant protection, 87 per cent for child occupant protection, 60 per cent for vulnerable road user protection (pedestrians and cyclists), and 90 per cent for safety assist technology.

The only safety score ANCAP has awarded VW’s reborn Kombi locally is a ‘Platinum’ rating for the driver-assistance systems in the related ID. Buzz Cargo delivery van.

The Volkswagen ID. Buzz GTX offers most of the safety systems expected of a new car – especially a $110,000 one – with the exception of traffic sign recognition, which is slowly rolling out on other VW models, but not here just yet.

Volkswagen has typically excelled at making its safety assists work well in the real world, rather than just ticking a box, and this car is no different.

Adaptive cruise control and lane centring – known as Travel Assist – are smartly tuned, lane-keep assist is gentle in most scenarios, and there were no annoying false alarms from the driver fatigue monitor.

One gripe is that lane-keep assist could become a touch pushy on tight country roads, but it was far from the end of the world – and it’s easy to turn off through a customisable shortcuts menu on the touchscreen.

The Volkswagen ID. Buzz is covered by a five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty on the vehicle itself, plus an eight-year/160,000km warranty for the high-voltage battery, and two years’ roadside assistance renewed with each service.

Service intervals are set every two years or 30,000km, whichever comes first, with the first five dealer visits quoted at $687 each.

Volkswagen offers prepaid Care Plans as an alternative to pay-as-you-go servicing, available in six-, eight- and 10-year forms that reduce the cost of maintenance by $611 to $1185.

For context, prepaid servicing for a Kia EV9 costs $1351 for five years or $1997 for seven.

Volkswagen claims 450km of driving range for the GTX – down only slightly on the 452km of the Pro LWB, despite larger wheels as standard, and one extra electric motor.

Over about 220km of highway and country driving on the media preview drive – including some spirited driving on mountain roads to test the handling – we saw 23.9kWh per 100 kilometres according to the trip computer, against a claim of 21.2kWh/100km.

It equates to a real-world driving range of 360km, a fair way off the claim. We saw consumption go as high as 25kWh/100km in certain conditions, equivalent to a circa-340km range.

In separate testing of the rear-drive Pro LWB in mixed city/country conditions, we’ve observed consumption closer to the 21 to 23kWh/100km range.

None of these figures are frugal by general electric-car standards, but for a 2.8-tonne vehicle shaped like a loaf of bread, it’s surprisingly efficient.

The 86kWh battery in the long-wheelbase ID. Buzz unlocks the highest charging power of any car on Volkswagen’s MEB electric-car platform, topping out at a claimed 200kW DC.

It is claimed to enable a 10 to 80 per cent recharge in 26 minutes, while an 11kW AC home wallbox is said to deliver a full recharge in nine hours.

If you want a people mover with a bit of spice, the 250kW ID. Buzz GTX serves up the balance of performance, handling and all-wheel-drive confidence you’d expect.

But for many buyers, most of the time, the biggest advantages of the high-performance model over an optioned-up 210kW/560Nm Pro on 21-inch wheels will be comfort and composure, not speed and fun factor. Let us explain.

Adding an electric motor to the front axle certainly injects more performance into the equation. Volkswagen claims 0–100km/h in 6.4 seconds – 1.5sec quicker than the Pro, and on par with a Golf GTI of a few years ago – and the GTX feels quick, especially for a 2.8-tonne box on wheels.

It’s not neck-snappingly fast like a hot Tesla, though, and the Pro is already perky for what it is. Unless your foot is to the floor, it doesn’t feel miles quicker than its cheaper sibling.

What the second electric motor does do is tame the handling.

Whereas the Pro – with a V8 worth of torque sent to just two wheels – is prone to wheelspin, and can be a little lairy at times, the GTX’s front motor adds the security of two extra driven wheels, and gives the ID. Buzz the stable, composed power delivery VW customers have come to expect from its ‘4Motion’ AWD cars.

All in all, it means this is the most confidence-inspiring model in the ID. Buzz range to drive. On a winding road, it puts its power down and flings you towards the horizon faster than any people mover needs to, combined with direct steering and not much body roll.

The rear bias of the power delivery – the rear motor (210kW/560Nm) is far more powerful than the front (80kW/134Nm) – is evident in the way it pushes, not pulls itself out of bends, but not in an overwhelming or scary way.

The Hankook S1 Ventus Evo3 tyres offer plenty of grip the road well, and Sport mode – or the Sport setting for the electric motor response, through Individual mode – dials up the regenerative braking to help bleed off speed when driving the car quickly.

The same effect can be reached through ‘B’ mode on the shifter, compared to ‘D’ – which exhibits minimal regen effect – but there’s no true one-pedal drive mode on offer, disappointingly.

Is it a true performance car? Not really. The steering (shared with the Pro) may be accurate, but it’s artificially heavy, accentuating the car’s weight, and a lack of bolstering in the carryover seats means we found ourselves clinging to the wheel in tight bends.

As with other VW MEB electric cars, the front brakes are discs, but the rears are old-school drums – and it means the brake pedal is soft, requiring a long push before the car starts pulling up quickly, which is not a great attribute for sporty driving.

To our surprise, one area where the GTX appears to improve upon the regular ID. Buzz is in ride comfort.

The performance flagship gains “sports suspension”, and there’s no denying it’s firm, especially over ripples in otherwise smooth roads, and particularly sharp-edged bumps. But some of the Pro’s choppy tendencies over rough roads (especially on 21-inch wheels) seem to have been calmed, without compromising its sure-footed, tied-down feel over undulations.

It would be even better on smaller wheels, an option we wish was offered.

We look forward to spending more time in the GTX on familiar roads to confirm our thoughts, but our initial impressions are that if you are worried that “sports suspension” is a one-way ticket to your passengers rediscovering their lunches, don’t be.

The rest of the drive experience is familiar. Visibility is excellent thanks to the high driving position, it’s easy to drive for such a big vehicle, and tyre roar is surprisingly well isolated, though there is some unavoidable wind noise given the shape of the car.

The GTX can also tow more than other models in the range, at 1600kg braked against 1200kg in the Pro SWB, and 1000kg in the Pro LWB.

It’s easy to write off the ID. Buzz GTX on paper as too expensive, too sporty in its suspension, and needlessly fast for a people mover.

But we can see why Volkswagen thinks one in five ID. Buzz customers will splurge for this 2.8-tonne, top-of-the-range model.

It’s the best model in the range to drive, with plenty of power, the confidence of all-wheel drive, and surprising comfort over bumps compared to cheaper variants.

It is not a performance car on the same level as a Golf GTI, naturally, but for customers who were already planning to tick every option box on an ID. Buzz Pro, we feel the benefits of the flagship model are worth the extra $5330.

But it means spending about $125,000 drive-away before options – a power of money for a family car without a luxury badge, and unable to capitalise on the fringe benefits tax incentives that have driven sales of cheaper electric cars. There’s no shying away from that price tag.

For most Australians, even the base five-seat model – at about $95,000 drive-away before options – will be not one, but multiple bridges too far.

Those that can afford the price of entry, however, will score themselves a roomy, well-equipped, affordable-to-run, and great-to-drive family bus that will turn heads like little else on the road.

Alex Misoyannis has been writing about cars since 2017, when he started his own website, Redline. He contributed for Drive in 2018, before joining CarAdvice in 2019, becoming a regular contributing journalist within the news team in 2020. Cars have played a central role throughout Alex’s life, from flicking through car magazines at a young age, to growing up around performance vehicles in a car-loving family. Highly Commended - Young Writer of the Year 2024 (Under 30) Rising Star Journalist, 2024 Winner Scoop of The Year - 2024 Winner

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