Volkswagen Golf
Car and Driver
Tested: two thousand seventeen Volkswagen Golf 1.8T TSI Automatic
2017 Volkswagen Golf 1.8T TSI Automatic
- Jan 2017
- By ALEXANDER STOKLOSA
- Photography By MICHAEL SIMARI
While we uncommonly skip an chance to praise the Volkswagen Golf, our infatuation has never fixated on the hatchback’s price. That’s because while its cost is reasonable, its core competencies—a solid structure, an impeccably finished interior, and convenient and capable suspension—would be welcome at any price. And value is just one of the main criteria we use to name cars to our 10Best Cars list, the others being satisfying driving dynamics and unparalleled execution of purpose. Because the Golf excels at all three, it has been named a 10Best winner for a decade running.
Even so, we recognize that a vast swath of buyers shop primarily on value. Those shoppers will be pleased by the tweaks VW has made to the Golf lineup for 2017, the last model year before a facelifted edition arrives. The base price is effectively lower than it was last year, and the number of trim levels has been diminished from four to just two, albeit each with more standard features than before. (In other Golf news, the two-door bod style has been axed, and by now you’re very likely aware of what happened to the diesel-engine option.)
The Payoff
Volkswagen’s adjustments leave the Golf lineup with only the base S and the now top-of-the-line Wolfsburg Edition models, both four-doors with either a five-speed manual transmission or a six-speed automatic paired with a gasoline-fed turbocharged four-cylinder engine. Other Golf-based derivatives proceed, including the longer SportWagen, the semi-rugged Alltrack, the sporty GTI, and the even sportier all-wheel-drive Golf R.
Beyond permitting Volkswagen to save a buck or two printing shorter sales brochures, the switches also dramatically narrow the Golf’s pricing envelope. Previously, the basic Golf range spanned almost $9000, from the $Nineteen,315 two-door Golf to the four-door $28,245 Golf SEL. For 2017, just $2800 separates the least and most expensive Golfs. The ’17 Golf S starts at $20,715, or $280 cheaper than last year’s base four-door Golf, and it includes more standard equipment, such as a leather-wrapped steering wheel and a more modern 6.5-inch touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integration.
It is the $22,415 Wolfsburg Edition tested here, however, that best represents Volkswagen’s value-added strategy for 2017. It comes with a sunroof, rain-sensing windshield wipers, automatic headlights, heated front seats, proximity key entry, blind-spot monitoring, forward-collision warning with automated emergency braking, and faux-leather seating surfaces. The only option besides paint and upholstery colors is the six-speed automatic transmission ($1100), which our test car had in place of the standard five-speed manual.
A similarly tooled two thousand sixteen Golf would have cost at least $27,540, but what truly drives home Volkswagen’s more aggressive pricing is that this Wolfsburg is stocked almost as fully as our $28,810 two thousand fifteen Golf SEL long-term test car. That car had 18-inch wheels, navigation, and dual-zone automatic climate control that this one lacks, omissions that are more or less offset in the value equation by the aforementioned blind-spot monitoring, forward-collision warning, and automated braking. Previous Golfs aren’t the only cars undercut by the ’17 Golf—the Wolfsburg Edition, in particular, compares favorably with the prices for similarly tooled hatchbacks such as the Mazda Trio, Ford Concentrate, and Chevrolet Cruze.
Fresh Price, Same Spectacle
Its lighter price tag has no effect at the test track, of course. The turbocharged 1.8-liter four-cylinder still makes one hundred seventy horsepower and one hundred ninety nine lb-ft of torque, and the six-speed automatic transmission’s ratios are unchanged. The Wolfsburg model tested here reached sixty mph in 7.Trio seconds and stopped from seventy mph in one hundred sixty eight feet. Those figures are a shade better than those laid down by our two thousand fifteen long-term test car when fresh. This Wolfsburg’s 0.84-g skidpad grip figure trails that car’s, due to its less grippy tires on 16-inch wheels in place of the older model’s 18-inch rubber.
Objective spectacle makes up only a puny part of our appreciation for the Golf, tho’. Subjective matters like the way the suspension soaks up road aberrations while keeping the assets vapid and managed through corners, the impeccably assembled cabin, and the boxy hatchback body’s exceptionally practical cargo-hauling capability draw us to the VW again and again. That said, a few on our staff disparage the square-corner form, which has hardly switched for decades.
We’re blessed to report that VW has addressed a few shortcomings we noted in our previous 40,000-mile test. The 6.5-inch touchscreen, fresh for the two thousand sixteen model year, is much quicker to react than the Five.8-inch unit in our long-term Golf and exhibited no untoward or buggy behavior. The graphics on both the touchscreen and the gauge-cluster information display still could use an injection of pixels for a sharper, more modern look, but function over form wins the day here. The six-speed automatic performed more sleekly than the same transmission in our long-term Golf, with fewer low-speed gear-selection hiccups, even if it remains the least fully realized chunk in the otherwise flawless Golf’s puzzle. Next year’s facelifted model, already on sale in Europe, will bring an even nicer dashboard display and minor styling updates.
Predictably, taking an already good car such as the Golf and pumping up its value quotient only makes it more appealing, and we’re glad that Volkswagen found a way to do so without undressing away the car’s excellence. This treatment is having a positive effect. VW applied similar price adjustments to the Passat and Jetta sedans, and sales of these three models during two thousand sixteen were down inbetween six and eight percent compared with 2015. Considering that diesels once made up almost a quarter of all VW sales in the U.S., it’s outstanding that such a clot could be applied to the bleeding in the wake of the emissions-cheating scandal. We hope that means we’ll have Golfs to love for many years to come.
Highs and Lows
Highs:
The segment benchmark is now an even better value, amazingly practical.
Automatic transmission not as competent as a human with the base manual, fewer trim-level choices across the range for `17.
Volkswagen Golf Reviews – Volkswagen Golf Price, Photos, and Specs – Car and Driver
Volkswagen Golf
Car and Driver
Tested: two thousand seventeen Volkswagen Golf 1.8T TSI Automatic
2017 Volkswagen Golf 1.8T TSI Automatic
- Jan 2017
- By ALEXANDER STOKLOSA
- Photography By MICHAEL SIMARI
While we infrequently skip an chance to praise the Volkswagen Golf, our infatuation has never fixated on the hatchback’s price. That’s because while its cost is reasonable, its core competencies—a solid structure, an impeccably finished interior, and comfy and capable suspension—would be welcome at any price. And value is just one of the main criteria we use to name cars to our 10Best Cars list, the others being satisfying driving dynamics and unparalleled execution of purpose. Because the Golf excels at all three, it has been named a 10Best winner for a decade running.
Even so, we recognize that a vast swath of buyers shop primarily on value. Those shoppers will be pleased by the tweaks VW has made to the Golf lineup for 2017, the last model year before a facelifted edition arrives. The base price is effectively lower than it was last year, and the number of trim levels has been diminished from four to just two, albeit each with more standard features than before. (In other Golf news, the two-door figure style has been axed, and by now you’re most likely aware of what happened to the diesel-engine option.)
The Payoff
Volkswagen’s adjustments leave the Golf lineup with only the base S and the now top-of-the-line Wolfsburg Edition models, both four-doors with either a five-speed manual transmission or a six-speed automatic paired with a gasoline-fed turbocharged four-cylinder engine. Other Golf-based derivatives proceed, including the longer SportWagen, the semi-rugged Alltrack, the sporty GTI, and the even sportier all-wheel-drive Golf R.
Beyond permitting Volkswagen to save a buck or two printing shorter sales brochures, the switches also dramatically narrow the Golf’s pricing envelope. Previously, the basic Golf range spanned almost $9000, from the $Nineteen,315 two-door Golf to the four-door $28,245 Golf SEL. For 2017, just $2800 separates the least and most expensive Golfs. The ’17 Golf S starts at $20,715, or $280 cheaper than last year’s base four-door Golf, and it includes more standard equipment, such as a leather-wrapped steering wheel and a more modern 6.5-inch touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integration.
It is the $22,415 Wolfsburg Edition tested here, however, that best represents Volkswagen’s value-added strategy for 2017. It comes with a sunroof, rain-sensing windshield wipers, automatic headlights, heated front seats, proximity key entry, blind-spot monitoring, forward-collision warning with automated emergency braking, and faux-leather seating surfaces. The only option besides paint and upholstery colors is the six-speed automatic transmission ($1100), which our test car had in place of the standard five-speed manual.
A similarly tooled two thousand sixteen Golf would have cost at least $27,540, but what indeed drives home Volkswagen’s more aggressive pricing is that this Wolfsburg is stocked almost as fully as our $28,810 two thousand fifteen Golf SEL long-term test car. That car had 18-inch wheels, navigation, and dual-zone automatic climate control that this one lacks, omissions that are more or less offset in the value equation by the aforementioned blind-spot monitoring, forward-collision warning, and automated braking. Previous Golfs aren’t the only cars undercut by the ’17 Golf—the Wolfsburg Edition, in particular, compares favorably with the prices for similarly tooled hatchbacks such as the Mazda Trio, Ford Concentrate, and Chevrolet Cruze.
Fresh Price, Same Spectacle
Its lighter price tag has no effect at the test track, of course. The turbocharged 1.8-liter four-cylinder still makes one hundred seventy horsepower and one hundred ninety nine lb-ft of torque, and the six-speed automatic transmission’s ratios are unchanged. The Wolfsburg model tested here reached sixty mph in 7.Trio seconds and stopped from seventy mph in one hundred sixty eight feet. Those figures are a shade better than those laid down by our two thousand fifteen long-term test car when fresh. This Wolfsburg’s 0.84-g skidpad grip figure trails that car’s, due to its less grippy tires on 16-inch wheels in place of the older model’s 18-inch rubber.
Objective spectacle makes up only a puny part of our appreciation for the Golf, tho’. Subjective matters like the way the suspension soaks up road aberrations while keeping the figure plane and managed through corners, the impeccably assembled cabin, and the boxy hatchback body’s exceptionally practical cargo-hauling capability draw us to the VW again and again. That said, a few on our staff disparage the square-corner form, which has hardly switched for decades.
We’re blessed to report that VW has addressed a few shortcomings we noted in our previous 40,000-mile test. The 6.5-inch touchscreen, fresh for the two thousand sixteen model year, is much quicker to react than the Five.8-inch unit in our long-term Golf and exhibited no untoward or buggy behavior. The graphics on both the touchscreen and the gauge-cluster information display still could use an injection of pixels for a sharper, more modern look, but function over form wins the day here. The six-speed automatic performed more slickly than the same transmission in our long-term Golf, with fewer low-speed gear-selection hiccups, even if it remains the least fully realized lump in the otherwise flawless Golf’s puzzle. Next year’s facelifted model, already on sale in Europe, will bring an even nicer dashboard display and minor styling updates.
Predictably, taking an already good car such as the Golf and pumping up its value quotient only makes it more appealing, and we’re glad that Volkswagen found a way to do so without disrobing away the car’s excellence. This treatment is having a positive effect. VW applied similar price adjustments to the Passat and Jetta sedans, and sales of these three models during two thousand sixteen were down inbetween six and eight percent compared with 2015. Considering that diesels once made up almost a quarter of all VW sales in the U.S., it’s incredible that such a clot could be applied to the bleeding in the wake of the emissions-cheating scandal. We hope that means we’ll have Golfs to love for many years to come.
Highs and Lows
Highs:
The segment benchmark is now an even better value, exceptionally practical.
Automatic transmission not as competent as a human with the base manual, fewer trim-level choices across the range for `17.
Volkswagen Golf Reviews – Volkswagen Golf Price, Photos, and Specs – Car and Driver
Volkswagen Golf
Car and Driver
Tested: two thousand seventeen Volkswagen Golf 1.8T TSI Automatic
2017 Volkswagen Golf 1.8T TSI Automatic
- Jan 2017
- By ALEXANDER STOKLOSA
- Photography By MICHAEL SIMARI
While we infrequently skip an chance to praise the Volkswagen Golf, our infatuation has never fixated on the hatchback’s price. That’s because while its cost is reasonable, its core competencies—a solid structure, an impeccably finished interior, and convenient and capable suspension—would be welcome at any price. And value is just one of the main criteria we use to name cars to our 10Best Cars list, the others being satisfying driving dynamics and unparalleled execution of purpose. Because the Golf excels at all three, it has been named a 10Best winner for a decade running.
Even so, we recognize that a vast swath of buyers shop primarily on value. Those shoppers will be pleased by the tweaks VW has made to the Golf lineup for 2017, the last model year before a facelifted edition arrives. The base price is effectively lower than it was last year, and the number of trim levels has been diminished from four to just two, albeit each with more standard features than before. (In other Golf news, the two-door figure style has been axed, and by now you’re most likely aware of what happened to the diesel-engine option.)
The Payoff
Volkswagen’s adjustments leave the Golf lineup with only the base S and the now top-of-the-line Wolfsburg Edition models, both four-doors with either a five-speed manual transmission or a six-speed automatic paired with a gasoline-fed turbocharged four-cylinder engine. Other Golf-based derivatives proceed, including the longer SportWagen, the semi-rugged Alltrack, the sporty GTI, and the even sportier all-wheel-drive Golf R.
Beyond permitting Volkswagen to save a buck or two printing shorter sales brochures, the switches also dramatically narrow the Golf’s pricing envelope. Previously, the basic Golf range spanned almost $9000, from the $Nineteen,315 two-door Golf to the four-door $28,245 Golf SEL. For 2017, just $2800 separates the least and most expensive Golfs. The ’17 Golf S starts at $20,715, or $280 cheaper than last year’s base four-door Golf, and it includes more standard equipment, such as a leather-wrapped steering wheel and a more modern 6.5-inch touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integration.
It is the $22,415 Wolfsburg Edition tested here, however, that best represents Volkswagen’s value-added strategy for 2017. It comes with a sunroof, rain-sensing windshield wipers, automatic headlights, heated front seats, proximity key entry, blind-spot monitoring, forward-collision warning with automated emergency braking, and faux-leather seating surfaces. The only option besides paint and upholstery colors is the six-speed automatic transmission ($1100), which our test car had in place of the standard five-speed manual.
A similarly tooled two thousand sixteen Golf would have cost at least $27,540, but what indeed drives home Volkswagen’s more aggressive pricing is that this Wolfsburg is stocked almost as fully as our $28,810 two thousand fifteen Golf SEL long-term test car. That car had 18-inch wheels, navigation, and dual-zone automatic climate control that this one lacks, omissions that are more or less offset in the value equation by the aforementioned blind-spot monitoring, forward-collision warning, and automated braking. Previous Golfs aren’t the only cars undercut by the ’17 Golf—the Wolfsburg Edition, in particular, compares favorably with the prices for similarly tooled hatchbacks such as the Mazda Trio, Ford Concentrate, and Chevrolet Cruze.
Fresh Price, Same Spectacle
Its lighter price tag has no effect at the test track, of course. The turbocharged 1.8-liter four-cylinder still makes one hundred seventy horsepower and one hundred ninety nine lb-ft of torque, and the six-speed automatic transmission’s ratios are unchanged. The Wolfsburg model tested here reached sixty mph in 7.Three seconds and stopped from seventy mph in one hundred sixty eight feet. Those figures are a shade better than those laid down by our two thousand fifteen long-term test car when fresh. This Wolfsburg’s 0.84-g skidpad grip figure trails that car’s, due to its less grippy tires on 16-inch wheels in place of the older model’s 18-inch rubber.
Objective spectacle makes up only a puny part of our appreciation for the Golf, however. Subjective matters like the way the suspension soaks up road aberrations while keeping the figure vapid and managed through corners, the impeccably assembled cabin, and the boxy hatchback body’s exceptionally practical cargo-hauling capability draw us to the VW again and again. That said, a few on our staff disparage the square-corner form, which has slightly switched for decades.
We’re blessed to report that VW has addressed a few shortcomings we noted in our previous 40,000-mile test. The 6.5-inch touchscreen, fresh for the two thousand sixteen model year, is much quicker to react than the Five.8-inch unit in our long-term Golf and exhibited no untoward or buggy behavior. The graphics on both the touchscreen and the gauge-cluster information display still could use an injection of pixels for a sharper, more modern look, but function over form wins the day here. The six-speed automatic performed more slickly than the same transmission in our long-term Golf, with fewer low-speed gear-selection hiccups, even if it remains the least fully realized chunk in the otherwise flawless Golf’s puzzle. Next year’s facelifted model, already on sale in Europe, will bring an even nicer dashboard display and minor styling updates.
Predictably, taking an already good car such as the Golf and pumping up its value quotient only makes it more appealing, and we’re blessed that Volkswagen found a way to do so without unclothing away the car’s excellence. This treatment is having a positive effect. VW applied similar price adjustments to the Passat and Jetta sedans, and sales of these three models during two thousand sixteen were down inbetween six and eight percent compared with 2015. Considering that diesels once made up almost a quarter of all VW sales in the U.S., it’s incredible that such a clot could be applied to the bleeding in the wake of the emissions-cheating scandal. We hope that means we’ll have Golfs to love for many years to come.
Highs and Lows
Highs:
The segment benchmark is now an even better value, exceptionally practical.
Automatic transmission not as competent as a human with the base manual, fewer trim-level choices across the range for `17.
Volkswagen Golf Reviews – Volkswagen Golf Price, Photos, and Specs – Car and Driver
Volkswagen Golf
Car and Driver
Tested: two thousand seventeen Volkswagen Golf 1.8T TSI Automatic
2017 Volkswagen Golf 1.8T TSI Automatic
- Jan 2017
- By ALEXANDER STOKLOSA
- Photography By MICHAEL SIMARI
While we infrequently skip an chance to praise the Volkswagen Golf, our infatuation has never fixated on the hatchback’s price. That’s because while its cost is reasonable, its core competencies—a solid structure, an impeccably finished interior, and convenient and capable suspension—would be welcome at any price. And value is just one of the main criteria we use to name cars to our 10Best Cars list, the others being satisfying driving dynamics and unparalleled execution of purpose. Because the Golf excels at all three, it has been named a 10Best winner for a decade running.
Even so, we recognize that a vast swath of buyers shop primarily on value. Those shoppers will be pleased by the tweaks VW has made to the Golf lineup for 2017, the last model year before a facelifted edition arrives. The base price is effectively lower than it was last year, and the number of trim levels has been diminished from four to just two, albeit each with more standard features than before. (In other Golf news, the two-door assets style has been axed, and by now you’re very likely aware of what happened to the diesel-engine option.)
The Payoff
Volkswagen’s adjustments leave the Golf lineup with only the base S and the now top-of-the-line Wolfsburg Edition models, both four-doors with either a five-speed manual transmission or a six-speed automatic paired with a gasoline-fed turbocharged four-cylinder engine. Other Golf-based derivatives proceed, including the longer SportWagen, the semi-rugged Alltrack, the sporty GTI, and the even sportier all-wheel-drive Golf R.
Beyond permitting Volkswagen to save a buck or two printing shorter sales brochures, the switches also dramatically narrow the Golf’s pricing envelope. Previously, the basic Golf range spanned almost $9000, from the $Nineteen,315 two-door Golf to the four-door $28,245 Golf SEL. For 2017, just $2800 separates the least and most expensive Golfs. The ’17 Golf S starts at $20,715, or $280 cheaper than last year’s base four-door Golf, and it includes more standard equipment, such as a leather-wrapped steering wheel and a more modern 6.5-inch touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integration.
It is the $22,415 Wolfsburg Edition tested here, however, that best represents Volkswagen’s value-added strategy for 2017. It comes with a sunroof, rain-sensing windshield wipers, automatic headlights, heated front seats, proximity key entry, blind-spot monitoring, forward-collision warning with automated emergency braking, and faux-leather seating surfaces. The only option besides paint and upholstery colors is the six-speed automatic transmission ($1100), which our test car had in place of the standard five-speed manual.
A similarly tooled two thousand sixteen Golf would have cost at least $27,540, but what truly drives home Volkswagen’s more aggressive pricing is that this Wolfsburg is stocked almost as fully as our $28,810 two thousand fifteen Golf SEL long-term test car. That car had 18-inch wheels, navigation, and dual-zone automatic climate control that this one lacks, omissions that are more or less offset in the value equation by the aforementioned blind-spot monitoring, forward-collision warning, and automated braking. Previous Golfs aren’t the only cars undercut by the ’17 Golf—the Wolfsburg Edition, in particular, compares favorably with the prices for similarly tooled hatchbacks such as the Mazda Trio, Ford Concentrate, and Chevrolet Cruze.
Fresh Price, Same Spectacle
Its lighter price tag has no effect at the test track, of course. The turbocharged 1.8-liter four-cylinder still makes one hundred seventy horsepower and one hundred ninety nine lb-ft of torque, and the six-speed automatic transmission’s ratios are unchanged. The Wolfsburg model tested here reached sixty mph in 7.Three seconds and stopped from seventy mph in one hundred sixty eight feet. Those figures are a shade better than those laid down by our two thousand fifteen long-term test car when fresh. This Wolfsburg’s 0.84-g skidpad grip figure trails that car’s, due to its less grippy tires on 16-inch wheels in place of the older model’s 18-inch rubber.
Objective spectacle makes up only a puny part of our appreciation for the Golf, however. Subjective matters like the way the suspension soaks up road aberrations while keeping the figure vapid and managed through corners, the impeccably assembled cabin, and the boxy hatchback body’s exceptionally practical cargo-hauling capability draw us to the VW again and again. That said, a few on our staff disparage the square-corner form, which has slightly switched for decades.
We’re blessed to report that VW has addressed a few shortcomings we noted in our previous 40,000-mile test. The 6.5-inch touchscreen, fresh for the two thousand sixteen model year, is much quicker to react than the Five.8-inch unit in our long-term Golf and exhibited no untoward or buggy behavior. The graphics on both the touchscreen and the gauge-cluster information display still could use an injection of pixels for a sharper, more modern look, but function over form wins the day here. The six-speed automatic performed more slickly than the same transmission in our long-term Golf, with fewer low-speed gear-selection hiccups, even if it remains the least fully realized chunk in the otherwise flawless Golf’s puzzle. Next year’s facelifted model, already on sale in Europe, will bring an even nicer dashboard display and minor styling updates.
Predictably, taking an already good car such as the Golf and pumping up its value quotient only makes it more appealing, and we’re glad that Volkswagen found a way to do so without undressing away the car’s excellence. This treatment is having a positive effect. VW applied similar price adjustments to the Passat and Jetta sedans, and sales of these three models during two thousand sixteen were down inbetween six and eight percent compared with 2015. Considering that diesels once made up almost a quarter of all VW sales in the U.S., it’s amazing that such a clot could be applied to the bleeding in the wake of the emissions-cheating scandal. We hope that means we’ll have Golfs to love for many years to come.
Highs and Lows
Highs:
The segment benchmark is now an even better value, exceptionally practical.
Automatic transmission not as competent as a human with the base manual, fewer trim-level choices across the range for `17.