The Big Picture Does the Volkswagen Golf MkVIII live up to its legacy?

Angus MacKenzie The Big Picture

1,100 miles in a Volkswagen Golf MkVIII exposes VW’s malaise era.

he only Volkswagen Golfs you can buy new in the U.S.

Tthese days are the sporty ones: the snappy 241-hp Golf GTI (the eighth-generation successor to the original hot hatch) and the 315-hp AWD Golf R. The latter is my favorite stealth supercar, a compact hatchback capable of—at least in Europe when fitted with the optional Performance package—terrorizing sleepy 911 drivers on the autobahn with its 167-mph top speed.

In America, the closely related Jetta sedan now handles the mainstream motoring needs of those who simply want transportation. I thought about the Jetta as I climbed into my Golf rental at Stuttgart Airport. “Sure, the Jetta is fairly big and spacious for its class,” features editor Christian Seabaugh summed up in his road test story of the 2022 Jetta SEL, “but whether you’re shopping for a feature-rich commuting appliance or something to spark a little joy, your money goes further elsewhere.”

Hmm. I was about to spend more than two weeks with a six-speed manual Golf with 30 fewer horses and 20 percent less torque under the hood than the U.S.-spec Jetta SEL Seabaugh reviewed. I would drive it from Stuttgart over the Alps to Turin, commute around Turin for a spell, and then head back over the Alps to Munich. Forget the GTI and the R: This was the Golf as mere transport, a detuned Jetta without the trunk. I felt disappointment looming.

The good stuff ? The chassis. Even in base trim, the latest Golf stops, steers, and handles better than most contemporary compact hatchbacks. Its demeanor displays a maturity and a confidence that its Japanese rivals still can’t match.

The standard 17-inch all-season tires hummed annoyingly on smooth German tarmac, but I was pleased by their comfy high sidewalls while commuting on Turin’s cratered streets. And they proved surprisingly grippy when hustling the Golf on downhill stretches of winding Alpine roads.

The bad stuff ? The shiny black touchscreen switch panels look unforgivably cheap and nasty and offer none of the tactile efficiency of the previous model’s switchgear.

The 128-hp, 147-lb-ft 1.5-liter turbocharged fourcylinder is a willing enough worker if you rev it. But the gearing means the engine spends most of its time at 2,000 rpm or less, where throttle response is soggier than a day-old bowl of Cheerios.

Worse, there’s a giant flat spot in the powerband right around 2,000 rpm. Punch the gas, and nothing much happens until at least 2,500, when the engine wakes up and starts paying attention. Even then, the revs hang annoyingly on upshifts, so it still feels lazy.

It’s all down to engine mapping and gearing done in the interest of good fuel efficiency, of course. And the Golf delivered on that front, averaging an indicated 36.6 mpg across 1,100 miles that included a tortuous climb over the 6,778-foot San Bernardino Pass on the tight and twisting old road, as well as plenty of running on German and Italian highways at 100 mph or faster. There’s just something missing from the entry-level Golf MkVIII. You used to get the sense that no matter how much you put into driving a Golf, it would still sometimes surprise you—still do something to make you smile. You felt like you bought a car that looked and felt more expensive than it really was. But look past the GTI and the R, and the magic that once made even the cheapest Golfs stand out from the hatchback crowd isn’t there today.

To me, the Golf felt emblematic of a malaise threatening to engulf what was once the world’s biggest and most adventurous automaker, a company that not only reinvented VW and Audi and Škoda but also rescued Lamborghini and Bentley and revived Bugatti.

Ferdinand Piëch, the man who made the modern Volkswagen Group, was a brilliant engineer and ruthless martinet, a businessman who broke all the rules because he didn’t need the job. He refused to take no for an answer from anyone who worked for him, but he’s been dead for more than three years now. VW perhaps misses his obsessive genius. Q