Well, there was one more 2nd hand Touareg in Wellington at GT Volkswagen so I went to take it for a spin, only to see it was just coming back from a test drive. That person bought it so I will have to wait for another, buy from out of town or go for the ML.
Frankly after looking over the ML and Touareg on the same yard the ML looks a bit dated although it does have an awesome stereo and off course the very good and economical 270TD motor!
Interestingly the sales guy said the same thing as beeker about the R5 vs the VR6 motor that it was quite slow and that the VR6 would be a much better day to day proposition.