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THE 8 BALL
The VW Golf seems to be have been with us for as long as time but there is no getting away from the fact that the first Golf GTl changed the way the entire world looked at hatchbacks and spawned a new phrase – the Hot Hatchback. And here we are again with the eighth incarnation of the famous marque. The first Golf hit the streets in 1974 as the Golf in Europe, the Rabbit in the US and the Caribe in Mexico, and was designed to replace the Beetle. No pressure there then! The Beetle is famous way beyond the car itself and you have to give it to those pesky
Germans, they did it again and with quite some flair. The Golf rapidly became their best selling car, won more awards than you can shake a stick at and has sold 35 million models – that’s one every 41 seconds. So enough of the history, have they finally dropped the ball with the eighth model? One could see this as a bit of a dinosaur, being that it is powered by fossil fuel, and the dreaded diesel at that! It is built on the same MQB platform as the Mark 7 so no changes to the size of the body but they have hit it with the ‘tech stick’, meaning no more dials as the entire thing is digital and a host of new whiz gadgets onboard to delight/ annoy you, in equal measure.
❛❛ The overhead gantry signs on the new
Smart motorways will converse with the car, as will that broken down car round the corner that has its hazards on and all this info is displayed on the central screen. Clever stuff ❜❜ 68
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The digital dash certainly looks impressive, and indeed it is, but why plonk it in where the old dash used to be and keep the arch over the dials that was there before? It is also not the easiest to use with some very small buttons to seek out but once you get used to it, it all works very well. Then you get Car2X, the system that talks to other cars and interactive road signs. The overhead gantry signs on the new Smart motorways will converse with the car, as will that broken down car round the corner that has its hazards on and all this info is displayed on the central screen. Clever stuff. By Senior Motoring Editor, Maarten Hoffmann
