Look on TireRack.

 

It would appear that tire selection for the VW Touareg starts off with the three doors scenario (18 in 19 in 20 in) and behind two of those doors are hungry tread eating tigers ! Past that entry point, brand and model wise ratings are mostly down hill after that. OEM tire ratings are almost all over the map. Other than OEM almost every selection good/bad is an outlier.

Having said that @ almost 20,000 miles, I am having good results with the 18 in size and GY LS 2 OEM's. The scenario is I run the so called highway fuel savings PSI ( in the oem owners manual) @ 3 PSI above. (33 psi/38 psi TO 36 psi/41 psi.) Early on in the game to 500/1000 miles, I did a very easy tires brake pads and rotors and suspension break in : NTE 65 mpg.

Wear per 1/32nd in has been 14,000 miles plus+.

 

Continental DWS has very good ratings and would be worth looking at.

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Initially liked the Pirelli Scorpion Verdes, but at 15K miles, they have become very noisy and tread will likely not last past 20K.

 

Admittedly I'm currently clueless on tire specs.
Have a tire, replace with same size tire is always the route I've taken.

Many times there are references to running different size tires on a rim especially on the AT tires, but I haven't quite worked out the nuances.

My question is:
Could you put a set of 255/55 R19 tires on the stock 19" rims?

 

Very good question, as there are more choices with much lower prices. I used the calculator from direct tires:

Tire Size Calculator - Discount Tire Direct

The 255/55 R19 have a section width of 10.04 and the 260/50 R19 is 10.43. The other differences are insignificant, such as a 2% speedometer under reading. So I will repeat your question, will this slightly narrower tire fit on the OEM rims?

Thanks.

 

I would suspect it will fit fine as that is a fairly small difference in rim width, with the following things to be aware of:
Less protection for your rims when parallel parking against curbs (less sidewall sticking out to keep the rims off the curb). While scraping a tire isn't good, it is better than scraping a rim, at least in my view. Make sure you change all 4 tires at the same time to the same tire.

In general the narrower tire will be better in snow and ice and worse for dry handling and sand. Someone with more off road experience will have to comment on mud. The actual tire's design, construction and condition will play a bigger role in these factors than the size.

 

I completely agree with the road noise of the Perreli Scorpions. It's terrible and people constantly tell me my car is loud through the blue tooth. And I'm at 45,000 miles on my 2012 Touareg TDI Lux and not far from purcasing my 2nd set of new tires... So I can't seem to get more than 25,000 miles per tire which is a cost of ownership I never considered.

 

Ditto on the Continental DWS. Great tire, low noise. As for tire life, 25-30k is about it on the Touareg...probably the only bummer about it.