Volkswagen’s development team has been pounding the snow again to get the 2024 Tiguan SUV ready for its global real next year. Earlier this month spy photographers spotted a black car equipped with small wheels and chrome-look window trim and roof rails and although we were able to pick out the new design of the body, which swaps the strong horizontal lines for a curvier shape with pronounced fender eyebrows, the dark color scheme made it hard to see the details in the front bumper.

But now VW’s R&D engineers working in northern Sweden have rolled out a second Tiguan in a contrasting color scheme to help us fill in the blanks. Maybe they just felt an overwhelming Christmas-y urge to give, what with being based so near to the North Pole. Like the black car, this new white prototype wears a dummy grille that consists of a wrap placed on the lower edge of the hood and the top part of the bumper. The idea is to make it look like the new Tiguan has the same style of grille as the current one, when in fact it will switch to a narrower, sportier grille opening like the one seen on the latest Mk8 Golf. There’s more fakery going on at the back where this car is fitted with stickers designed to look like the quad tailpipes on a current-generation R-Line Tiguan.

 

The white paint also makes it easier to see the design of the lower part of the bumper, though it appears that too has been disguised with a black and chrome stickers to mimic the enlarged side intakes on the current car. Our guess is the final design will feature far more body color paint, with only the central section picked out in black, and possibly a very small auxiliary grille fitted to each side.

We know from previous spy shots that the Tiguan’s interior will feature a large, square tablet-style touchscreen, but things are likely to be more familiar under the hood where you’ll find a mix of petrol and diesel combustion engines, including a plug-in hybrid. As before, there’ll be both front- and all-wheel drive transmission options, but no pure EV. If you want one of those with a VW badge you’ll need to buy an ID.4.