A Golf that’s like a lot of previous Golfs
Is that still a good thing in this turbulent world?
The first point of order, and then we shall never speak of it again, is that the day our new Golf Mk8 was to turn up, my dog ate something untoward and then threw up some luminous bile-coloured sick on the landing carpet.
As I was cleaning it up, a car of exactly the same luminous yellow threw itself up on our driveway. What a coincidence!
Lime Yellow Metallic is a £625 option that may not be chosen by many buyers not involved in breakdown recovery, but it’s certainly garnered quite a bit of attention. That may be at odds with the usual Golf proposition, of providing high-quality, mostly anonymous driving, but this level of attention-seeking feels appropriate for an icon trying to stay relevant: the ageing rocker making a grime album. For as the Golf has gently and conservatively morphed into its fairly predictable eighth generation, the streets are burning (or in fact, quite the opposite: not burning) with revolution and radical reinvention.
Even Volkswagen itself has put a new-era rival into contention with the dear old Golf in the shape its own ID.3. The ultimate dissonant, disruptive act. How very 2020s…
So I’ll be spending six months with the Golf working out its place in the world. Or if there is a place for it at all. We’ve gone for an engine which, while not the full grime album, is perhaps a collaboration on one or two tracks: the 1.5 eTFSI 150PS. This mild-hybrid powertrain has a 48-volt lithium-ion battery and starter-generator, which among other thing acts as small motor to add boost when pulling away, and to let the car coast with the engine switched off while on the move.
All this should – according to the new ocial fuel consumption test system – provide us with fuel economy in the mid-40s. It will be put to the test, though, because escaping the Moody homestead requires seven or eight miles of winding country lanes that might as well have been designed specifically to royally bugger up fuel economy.
On said lanes, early driving impressions have been very positive, if not exactly mindblowing. This new Golf is remarkably smooth, predictable and comfortable.
Perhaps that’s because several options have been added to the spec, mostly to bring comfort to the ageing driver (me): heated front seats (£275), head-up display (£625), rear-view camera (£300) and some rear side airbags (£475). On the sexier front, there are 17-inch Ventura alloys and a digital key option for a phone (£215). I’ll get my daughter to set that up.
Technology of course plays a big part in a new car now and we have as standard Car-Net and We Connect, which between them provide advanced infotainment and connectivity. As with all Golf 8s we have Car2X, which seems to be some sort of Tinder for cars, meaning it will talk to other Car2X-equipped vehicles and ask them out for a drink (no strings attached) or avoid them if it doesn’t like the look of their profile, or they are about to crash into them.
So far, not much swiping either left or right has occurred on this front, because living in darkest Lincolnshire the only communication most cars elicit is their ‘Back Nigel’ UKIP bumper stickers, partially obscured by diesel soot and mud. Nevertheless, we wait excitedly for first contact with other techy millennials like ourselves and will report back on how the whole thing goes.