Golf set for Life
GOOD ENOUGH TO BE A FOREVER CAR
This doesn’t happen very often. Carmakers like to show off all the gadgets available and of course want us all to buy the most expensive model in the range. With this goal in mind, they tend to provide test cars to hacks like me that are in top spec with lots of goodies added. This we know because I regularly mention it. So it’s a bit of a treat when a nice and simple car arrives – cars like this week’s Volkswagen Golf estate.
It’s in the most basic Life spec, which in the olden days when car company product planning departments weren’t so creative, would have been called the ‘L’.
Ours does have a few options added, such as bigger alloy wheels which are 17in in diameter instead of 16in, a head-up display, rear parking camera, a winter pack that includes bum warmers and, finally, metallic paint. This by no means brief list lifts our car’s price from £24,575 to a not unreasonable £27,390.
This Golf Estate Life has a refreshingly simple mechanical specification too: a 1.0-litre three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine that produces a modest 110PS driving through a six-speed manual gearbox.
Volkswagen quotes a combined WLTP fuel consumption for this arrangement of 51.1mpg, and my experience with the car over a week proved that you’d be able to get very close to this figure. Perhaps even better it.
Volkswagen didn’t offer an estate version of the Golf until the Mk3 came along in 1993, but it has made the car ever since and in the process making it bigger as each generation came along. And so it is with this new Mk8.
It’s 71mm longer than the outgoing Golf estate with a useful extra 67mm in its wheelbase.
You’ll notice this if you’re hopping from the old car to this one because there’s significantly more rear legroom.
There’s more load space too, but only up 6 litres to 611 litres with the seats up (and 1,642 litres seats folded – which is 22 litres more than before).
What you’ll also notice coming from the old model is a dashboard and instrument panel that’s almost devoid of switches and buttons. Like the new Golf hatchback introduced over a year ago now, the estate uses the new VW infotainment system. It’s fitted not just to the Golf but the ID.3 and ID.4 EVS, the new Skoda Octavia and Seat Leon among other new VW
Group products.
I’ve said my piece about this system: it’s awkward to use and seems to have been designed as an object never intended to be used by a human.
What I also noted on the Golf hatchback was rather a lot of average-quality plastics at nipple height on the dashboard.
But even with these criticisms I really liked this car. If owning an electric car is always going to be impractical or impossible due to not
having off-street parking, or you just don’t want one; then this blissfully simple and effective Golf estate would be the perfect motor to buy now and keep for ever.
Or until petrol is no longer sold. Big enough to be more useful than a hatchback but not too big to park, an economical yet powerful enough engine which is quiet and smooth, a nice manual gearbox and suspension that gives a comfortable ride.
And all that topped off with a sensible price.