ALL THE SMALL THINGS
Incrementally improved Volkswagen Golf 7.5 takes on box-fresh rivals
SO COMPREHENSIVE was the Golf Mk7’s victory in the 2013 edition of Wheels Car of the Year, that there were many mutterers in the office who believed that were it eligible for entry the following year, it would have wiped the floor with the best of 2014’s crop. While this would have denied thousands of online commentators the chance to congratulate us on our choice of the BMW i3 for COTY 2014, the extravagantly talented Golf 7 has remained the benchmark car in its class, before being mildly refreshed this year in 7.5 guise. We’re used to there being barely a chink in the Golf’s armour, but examine the refreshed range and you’ll wonder why there’s such a gaping hole between the 110kw 1.4-litre TSI and the forthcoming 169kw 2.0-litre GTI. So in order to take the box-fresh Golf out of its comfort zone, we’re pitching the 1.4-litre TSI against a trio of talented rivals that ask much the same price that Volkswagen charges but pack significantly more herbs. Holden’s Astra, a Wheels Car of the Year 2017 contender, needs little in the way of introduction. We’re unashamed advocates of the Opel-bred hatch’s dynamics and the 147kw 1.6-litre turbo RS-V rangetopper is, by a margin, the cheapest car here. Blue-tinged of collar it may be, but waging asymmetric warfare against the occasionally haughty Volkswagen could well prove Holden’s masterstroke.
On paper, the Hyundai i30 SR Premium appears an instant front-runner. With a huge equipment list, a peppy 150kw from its 1.6-litre turbo four, an independent rear end at last, and a newfound confidence in third-gen guise, the i30 has nothing of the underdog about it. Back that up with a five-year warranty and the Korean comes in swinging.
Honda’s Civic hatch has divided opinion with its styling, but there aren’t too many dissenting voices on the quality of its chassis or the sheer amount of car on offer, the Civic looking almost half a class bigger than the norm. With 127kw under the bonnet from its 1.5-litre turbo four, driving through a CVT gearbox, is the Honda a little too big for its own good?
Running numbers on the cars was instructive, but first a mea culpa. In the bleary-eyed pre-dawn, we fuelled the Golf with the minimum-recommended 95 rather than 98 RON as was used in the others, in the process exacerbating its already hefty power deficit. So it was perhaps no great surprise that it logged the slowest times at the strip, recording 8.3 seconds to 100km/h and a 0-400m time of 16.2 seconds. Still, that’s a mere tenth down on Volkswagen’s claimed numbers which, given the car was loaded to the gunwales with options and was asked to perform on a cold and damp track, was a hugely creditable showing. Exciting, no, the dual-clutch transmission registering not one chirrup of wheelspin, but impressive in its own way.
The Civic and Hyundai were predictably quicker, but the champ in a straight line was the Astra, the Vbox churning out 7.2 seconds to 100km/h and 15.2 seconds to 400m. Round one to Holden, then, despite the fact the Astra’s familiar silhouette and slight dearth of charisma meant that it was always the last set of keys left in the hat. Even in RS-V specification, the car’s fussy wheels and equally over-elaborate three-quarter detailing undersell what’s on offer.
At just $31,740 for this automatic model, the RS-V delivers serious value for money, offering almost $2000 worth of headroom to the next most expensive car in this test, the $33,590 Honda Civic VTI-LX. The Astra’s hardly in stripper spec either, with LED front and rear lights, heated seats and steering wheel, and a whole suite of electronic safety functions like AEB, lane-keep assist, adaptive cruise, and blind-spot alert.
Spring for the Civic and you do get a lot of styling. All of it in fact. In a swage-line-per-dollar comparison, the Honda registers a solid six stars out of five. Beyond that, the lane keep/adaptive cruise combination is the best calibrated of the lot here, giving the car a taste of the old-school meticulous Honda engineering many thought had gone for good. The mapping graphics, on the other hand, look as if the designers had run riot with a jumbo pack of fluoro markers.
The i30 would seem to wear its $33,950 sticker price a little self-consciously, but the range-topping SR Premium with the auto ’box packs a lot in. Strip it back to the SR with a manual box (with the added bonus of a manual handbrake too), and that would run you a mere $25,950. Would you really miss the LED headlights, a panoramic glass sunroof, heated and cooled front seats, chrome body finishes, one-touch windows, and a power outlet in the luggage area? It’s still absolutely rammed with kit including the phone charging induction pad (iphone users need to buy a special case to power up their handsets). That said, the auto model also bundles in AEB, adaptive cruise, and lane-keep assist, which goes some way to justifying the price.
The Golf should retail at $34,490 in Highline trim, but somebody got a bit keen when specifying this test car and added the driver assistance package, infotainment package, R-line package, and some wholly outre Turmeric Yellow metallic paint to bump its price up to within $50 of an outgoing GTI. Try to ignore the tinsel; the car doesn’t need it.
The added 18kw over the old 92TSI doesn’t make as much difference as expected. There’s an extra 50Nm of torque on tap when the turbocharger gets its trousers on from 1500rpm, but the Golf 7’s character and its winning combo of pliant ride and perky handling carry over much as before. Volkswagen claims to have digitised the Golf with this midlife makeover, and with the 12.3-inch Active Info Display in the cowl, you can render yourself digitally surprised and delighted, though the standard Highline doesn’t get this, so it’s as you were.
Tailing the Golf through a set of hairpins in the i30 is instructive. There’s a benign malleability to the way
There’s a benign malleability to the way the i30 tackles a road
the Hyundai tackles a road. It’s soft-edged, with long strokes to the pedal arcs and a one-pause-two as the body settles into a corner, but it’s certainly quick across country. The steering and gearbox are bang on the money for a warm hatch, responsive but never neurotic. Driven up to about eight-tenths, the i30 is a heck of a package, with only an initial lack of brake pedal response counting against it.
Turn the wick up further and it’s clear where Volkswagen spent all that budget on the Golf 7. The Hyundai’s composure deteriorates, the steering rack rattling, the ESP system chopping in unnecessarily, and the Hankook Ventus tyres lacking the smooth transition into understeer of the Volkswagen’s Bridgestone Potenza rubber. Rev hang is also evident, the engine having a notably lazy spool-down.
The Civic also struggles when given a stern examination, but the problem here isn’t the chassis. It’s the CVT, which, even in Sport mode, never puts enough torque on the table as you engage the front of the car into a corner. It feels akin to entering in neutral and taking up the clutch in a manual car, the 1.5-litre turbo lump delivering enough Newton metres to drag the car into some semblance of composure two-thirds of the way through a bend after a clumsy pass at the apex. Marshal the ’box yourself via the wheel-mounted paddles and the engine sounds thrashy as you try to make the most of the meagre 220Nm. It’s all a bit of a shame, as the Civic clearly features a talented chassis, but it’s been comprehensively hobbled by the unhappy engine and gearbox combination.
The Astra RS-V has no such issue. It’ll drive clean away from the Golf on any road you care to choose, courtesy of handling that’s at least on par and a manifestly superior powerplant. The Golf’s 1.4-litre TSI unit sounds hollow and somewhat two-dimensional when absolutely wrung out in pursuit of the Holden, feeling all of its 37kw and 50Nm deficit. In fact, the Astra just gets better the more abuse you fling at it, signalling the edge of adhesion by a rapid-fire drumming harmonic from the outside front suspension assembly. One suspects you’d find its shortcomings on track, but for a fast road setup, the dynamics represent a sweet set of compromises. Even the Sport mode does a decent job, weighting up the steering by a few degrees without introducing a synthetic stickiness. Hats off to the chassis teams at Russelsheim and Lang Lang. It’s a heck of an achievement.
The Astra will drive clean away from the Golf on any road you care to choose