► CAR lives with a Mk8 Golf
► The same as always, is that a good thing?
► Steve Moody swaps out of a regular one for a GTI
There was a lot of chat when this was launched about how VW had made the Mk8 GTI edgier and more aggressive, but after six months with the car I just don’t see it. If anything, the changes to the GTI have made it even more thoroughly competent, as opposed to more highly strung.
There’s a section of tight, steeply uphill, S-bend corners on my way home from town. In most cars something’s always wrong. Wrong gear, wrong revs, wrong load, cyclist, squirrel or sheep in the way.
But the Golf goes round these corners like they’re not there. That’s because the torque band is so wide it’s a torque girdle, the DSG nails the right cogs every time, the front diff apportions drive to each wheel surgically, and the steering locks the GTI in a perfect set of unfussy arcs.
That’s what makes this a brilliant car. Yes, I’d like to take those bends with my bum cheeks clamped, adrenaline pumping, eyes popping, arms wheeling, but only on the odd occasion. The other 99 per cent of the time, I want to go round them like I do in the Golf: consummately swift, elegantly controlled, perfectly comfortable.
Perhaps I’d like the steering to be slightly sharper initially and perhaps a little more power might be good too. But the GTI is such a wonderful mix of everything you could want in one car, I wonder if adding more might actually make it less.
Even the sound it makes is a nice balance between fizzy sportiness and reasonable volume. It doesn’t create any fake pops and bangs, or tell people you’re on your way when you’re in the next county.
And it has such broad appeal. Ownership could be achieved with every penny you have, or it could be the car you drive despite being loaded. After all these decades, the GTI is still the car that democratises performance motoring.
There are so few things wrong with this car it should only take this paragraph to sort them. The infotainment is infuriatingly laggy and/or just entirely gives up sometimes, especially with Apple CarPlay. But you’ve heard this all before: it’s the same across all VWs using this system. How it got to the dealer floor in this state is a question. And the touch-sensitive buttons on the steering wheel are annoyingly easy to activate. But you’ve probably heard this before too.
The question (also posed by Mark Walton when he had a go in it) is this: is it different enough from other Golfs, or is GTI just a trim level now rather than being its own thing? What I would say is that there is not a vast gulf between the generic Golf and a GTI, but that’s as much because most cars are pretty quick now, and most cars drip with toys and trinkets.
The GTI could have been more extreme and widened the gap but in doing so it would no longer be the GTI. Which is to say, it would be a bonkers track toy rather than what it is. So I suppose the answer I would give to the question of whether the Golf GTI is all the car you ever need is fairly obvious. Even as the popularity of internal-combustion cars wanes it is remarkable to think that this one should be part of that ebb. It does everything you could ask of it.
I’m glad that at the fag end of burning stuff to go places, the GTI is still as relevant and brilliant as ever.
By Steve Moody
Logbook: VW Golf GTI
Price £35,025 (£42,685 as tested)
Performance 1984cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 240bhp, 6.3sec 0-62mph, 155mph
Efficiency 38.2mpg (official), 33.4mpg (tested), 168g/km CO2
Energy cost 17.6p per mile
Miles this month 912
Total miles 4369
Month 5 living with a VW Golf GTI: the dark side is vanquished
As well as clever headlights that automatically poke and prod into shadows while throwing boxes of darkness around other cars, the GTI also has an LED lightsaber running the width of the nose.
I know when it switches on, because you can see it reflected in cars ahead. I don’t know what it’s for, other than to passive-aggressively move other road users out of the way by making the Golf look scowly in the dark.
The big show comes when you put the arsenal of 10 (yes, 10!) foglights on. I reckon a trawlerman lost in a pea souper off Dogger Bank would be guided home by the Golf. Brilliant, quite literally.
By Steve Moody
Logbook: VW Golf GTI
Price £35,025 (£42,685 as tested)
Performance 1984cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 240bhp, 6.3sec 0-62mph, 155mph
Efficiency 38.2mpg (official), 33.4mpg (tested), 168g/km CO2
Energy cost 17.6p per mile
Miles this month 689
Total miles 3457
Month 4 living with a VW Golf GTI: Megane messin’
The other day, while in the Golf, the kids and I had the hilarious entertainment of following a squirrel down a country lane. Tracked by us, this poor, panicking little rodent couldn’t decide which escape route to take and zigzagged crazily, manically down the middle of the road until finally leaping up a tree trunk.
Well paint me red, stuff my nuts in a hole and put a bushy tail on me, the joke’s on the other paw now, for having swapped the GTI for our long-term test fleet Megane RS, I am Squirrel Nuttykins. And the kids aren’t laughing any more either.
The Megane is not suited to country roads. It skitters, scatters, hops, leaps and prances, all short-twitch sinew and frazzling reactivity. The squirrel was positively sedentary compared to the RS.
Things are not much less manic on urban roads with patches and potholes. Or, in fact, on roads in any location that don’t have a surface like Silverstone.
It’s so singular in purpose that it makes me pine for the laid-back adaptability of the GTI. Two cars that are the same size, same colour, same price and yet completely different. The GTI is pretty sane in most situations. The Megane is the flip side.
For me, it makes the Megane a tough sell as your only car. It would drive you to distraction because even the most mundane thing becomes eventful. I twitched my way to the shop in it, never once doing anything other than light throttle and never once going near the RS button, and when I got back home, under the bonnet fans were busily roaring like I’d just completed a qualifying lap at the Nordschleife. It’s a bit embarrassing, to be honest.
That said, in a straight fight on a good road, the Megane performs so far beyond the GTI’s capabilities it is remarkable. On those occasions, where every factor magically combines (road surface, weather, a light breakfast and a bravery pill) the Megane can do things you can only dream of in the GTI.
But those times come around so very rarely that in one-car ownership I think it would be hard to live with, while the GTI is lovely in the majority of conditions.
Mark asked in his first piece on the RS whether it can be a genuine alternative to a Golf GTI. No chance: I’ll stick to following Squirrel Nuttykins – distantly – in the GTI, thanks.
By Steve Moody
Logbook: VW Golf GTI
Price £35,025 (£42,685 as tested)
Performance 1984cc turbo four-cyl, 240bhp, 6.3sec 0-62mph, 155mph
Efficiency 38.2mpg (official), 33.4mpg (tested), 168g/km CO2
Energy cost 17.4p per mile
Miles this month 706
Total miles 2768
Month 3 living with a Golf GTI: the surf is calling
Who do we leave behind?
GTI is the car for every job, right? Not here. Support vehicle needed for dogs and boards. A reminder of the appeal of the massive SUVs we love to hate.
Taking control
No sign of previous overly-active cruise shenanigans on the slog across from Lincolnshire to the M5 and down to Cornwall. In fact, in heavy traffic and annoying jams it works perfectly, making this bit just about bearable.
Glad that’s behind us
These seats not only look great in their blocky colour scheme, but they are stupendously comfortable after six hours and the driving position is perfect too. Seating fans unused due to typical rubbish weather.
Royal airpod force
Wireless Apple CarPlay is still a bit clunky and it heats my phone up to melting point. But three hours of podcasts about WW2 helps to pass the time.
Stringbacks on
After hours of cruising that felt like days, we finally hit some caravan-less roads and Comfort Golf gets replaced by Let’s Just Bloody Get There GTI. It’s not super fast, but is swift.
Deceptively big boot…
In these tight environs the GTI is just fabulous: nippy, precise and compact to park. The car for every occasion indeed (especially with the wife’s Duster in tow).
By Steve Moody
Logbook: VW Golf GTI
Price £35,025 (£42,685 as tested)
Performance 1984cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 240bhp, 6.3sec 0-62mph, 155mph
Efficiency 38.2mpg (official), 32.9mpg (tested), 168g/km CO2
Energy cost 17.6p per mile
Miles this month 1298
Total miles 2062
Month 2 living with a VW Golf GTI: our car vs ghost Jazzes
The climate control doesn’t work (sometimes), the touchscreen has a three- or four-second lag (sometimes), the speed-reading gubbins bears no relation to the road, showing 110 on a motorway and 20 on a country lane (sometimes), and the active cruise control slows for old people in Honda Jazzes in other lanes (sometimes). At other times it all works just fine. When it doesn’t, you’re left hopelessly shouting into the void.
VW is having a poke around, so it’s back to perhaps have some new software downloaded, and maybe some cameras refocused. Let’s hope that fixes it.
By Steve Moody
Logbook: VW Golf GTI
Price £35,025 (£42,685 as tested)
Performance 1984cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 240bhp, 6.3sec 0-62mph, 155mph
Efficiency 38.2mpg (official), 32.9mpg (tested), 168g/km CO2
Energy cost 17.8p per mile
Miles this month 482
Total miles 764
Month 1 living with a Golf GTI: time to swap!
So the question we asked ourselves at the onset of this particular test was, in a world of electric and crossovers, is this dear old new Golf actually relevant any more?
Well, after six months, I can say definitively: yes.
I’ve thrown the kitchen sink at it, everyday life-wise, and there’s not really been any point where I’ve thought I could do with sitting in a more commanding position, or felt that twinge of guilt as the fuel needle falls. There’s enough room for everyone and everything, and it goes about its business with minimal fuss.
I looked at the light grey fabric seats when it turned up and doubted they would stand the test of time, but even melted Maltesers wipe off with a quick swipe. The boot I thought might be a bit on the small side, but two Labradors didn’t complain and nor did our school-project cardboard-cutout Ranulph Fiennes.
When you concentrate, you can get impressively low fuel consumption, with 60mpg not unheard of. Sometimes.
Blimey, this is a dull report.
To be honest, it’s a reflection of the car, I hope, and not me. It’s fine. Perfectly Golfy, ideal for somebody who really just wants to move about unfussily and comfortably, and has no interest in an exciting or involving driving experience.
But with cars now pushing all sorts of technological boundaries, where each one has more tricks than Dynamo, the Golf hides the clever stuff: you really wouldn’t know it was a mild hybrid.
Less clever is some of the technology that does make it to the surface. While this is hardly news, the touchscreen system is sketchy to say the least. How did it ever get signed off in such a state?
So the regular Golf, in £30k-ish mild-hybrid form, is great at being a Golf, less good at being a funky, techno showpiece. Still relevant, but by no means cutting edge.
But this is not the end of our investigation into living with a Mk8 Golf. Because now, after six months in the eTSI, I’m switching to the latest GTI. Golf GTIs rarely disappoint, but you do wonder how relevant it will feel in a world that seems to expect its hot hatches to be much hotter than this.
I wasn’t that fussed about the dog sick/bile yellow colour on the eTSI but the GTI has turned up in Kings Red metallic, and frankly it is stunning. Not bright, not dark, just richly, sparkly, decadently ruby. People keep commenting on how good it looks, which is a decent start for any long-term test car.
A thing to note in the Golf changeover here is the price. Our 1.5 eTSI Style was a smidge over 28 grand and if I hadn’t got a bit carried away on the options list the GTI would be only £7000 more for 95bhp extra and a skipload more presence and performance, as well as promising more driver involvement thanks to the new front locking differential and Vehicle Dynamics Manager system. In that context, £35,025 for a car like this is good value, even before a wheel has turned in anger.
But as I said, I might have got a bit carried away on the options list, and this particular one is fitted with Dynamic Chassis Control (£785), 19-inch Adelaide alloys (£725), rear-view camera (£300), head-up display (£625), Vienna leather seats (£2100), Discover Navigation Pro (£1600) and a digital key (£215), because in the old Golf I got bored of having to dig around for the fob in pockets and bags, among facemasks and sanitiser, to unlock it.
Because it was so new out of the wrapping, I’ve spent the first couple of weeks doddering about, running it in, which is probably an old-fashioned affectation these days, but it means I can’t really make any early comments about performance.
One early relief is that the ride appears excellent. In my excitement to fit bigger, snarkier alloys, I might have condemned myself to six months of oscillating eyeballs and chattering teeth, given the state of some of my local roads, but it is firm yet beautifully damped. One early concern is the dreaded VW touchscreen seems laggier than even the eTSI’s.
So go on, I’ll roll the old cliche out (and promise to lock it away again after): is a Golf GTI all the car you ever need? Time to find out…
By Steve Moody
Logbook: VW Golf GTI
Price £35,025 (£42,685 as tested)
Performance 1984cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 240bhp, 6.3sec 0-62mph, 155mph
Efficiency 38.2mpg (official), 33.1mpg (tested), 168g/km CO2
Energy cost 17.6p per mile
Miles this month 192
Total miles 282
Logbook: VW Golf 1.5 eTSI DSG Style
Price £28,025 (£30,900 as tested)
Performance 1498cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 147bhp, 8.5sec 0-62mph, 139mph
Efficiency 43.2mpg (official), 43.9mpg (tested), 130g/km CO2
Energy cost 13.3p per mile
Miles this month 987
Total miles 4045
Month 5 living with a VW Golf: don’t look, GTI…
While this Golf is a pretty uninspiring drive, the upside is that it’s better than most at suppressing fuel consumption, when the mood takes you.
I’ve done a few hypermiling competitions over the years, and I reckon this 1.5 eTSI would fare well. The mild-hybrid powertrain, giving a little electro-nudge at low speeds and shutting the engine down imperceptibly at a moment’s notice, means you can spend a lot of time not blowing up the Earth’s resources.
If you’re concentrating it’s relatively easy to beat its official fuel economy figure and get over 60mpg – from a petrol engine. Brilliant! I must be getting old…
By Steve Moody
Logbook: VW Golf 1.5 eTSI DSG Style
Price £28,025 (£30,900 as tested)
Performance 1498cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 147bhp, 8.5sec 0-62mph, 139mph
Efficiency 43.2mpg (official), 40.1mpg (tested), 130g/km CO2
Energy cost 12.2p per mile
Miles this month 759
Total miles 3058
Month 4 living with a VW Golf: too close to call
One of the incontrovertible truths about the Golf is that it is suited to any occasion. This current one, even in middling 1.5 eTSI Style form, is no exception.
So it is ironic that a car pushing it to the margins is also from Volkswagen, and really isn’t suited to all occasions. The ID.3 is a Golf for those who find the Golf a bit too much of a rounded companion, and prefer something with more electric habits.
And there are more of those customers. In some months, the electric one is outselling the petrol one, and it is easy to see why.
The Mk8 Golf is a workmanlike upgrade while the ID.3 is essentially the Golf as concept car: what designers and engineers would build if the market allowed them to move the Golf away from its inch-by-inch evolution. True, from a distance, it hardly looks like a futurist’s wet dream, but it is smoothly handsome and has sleek detailing, while the Golf’s two-box outline looks clunky alongside.
Where the Golf’s cabin is everything you might expect, with big, solid surfacing (albeit with some bits of rather lacklustre plastic lower down) the ID.3 is uplifting. It’s light, airy, clever and elegantly spare.
And the way it drives. I adore electric cars for their ceaseless momentum and the ID.3 is as good as any at this: the instant production of speed means you get everywhere quickly without going fast – as long as you don’t need to go more than 180 miles, that is.
Over poor surfaces the ride is chattery, and the regenerative braking infuriatingly inconsistent. But getting back in the Golf – revvy, noisy and gearchange-y – felt strangely reductive.
Then I had to go on a 350-mile trip. The Golf on a motorway is dependably excellent and did nearly 50mpg. The ID.3, for all its brilliance, couldn’t be as handy. Given the choice of only one, I would dearly love an ID.3. But for now, and with boring rationality kicking in, I’d stick with the Golf.
By Steve Moody
Logbook: VW Golf 1.5 eTSI DSG Style
Price £28,025 (£30,900 as tested)
Performance 1498cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 147bhp, 8.5sec 0-62mph, 139mph
Efficiency 49.5mpg (official), 42.4mpg (tested), 130g/km CO2
Energy cost 12.8p per mile
Miles this month 897
Total miles 2299
Month 3 living with a VW Golf: a celebrity hitch-hiker
I gave Ranulph Fiennes a lift the other day and I was very surprised he fitted in.
Due to a failure of online ordering the canvas for my son’s art project on the subject of explorers was not quite as anticipated and mixed-media Ranulph ended up somewhat more massive than planned. But with the rear seats laid flat and the fronts pushed forward, he slotted in the Golf as snugly as if he was in a sleeping bag at the North Pole.
On this front, tackling the mundanities and idiocies of everyday life, the Golf is consummate. As I said when it first arrived, the hatchback is an old-fashioned concept but an enduring one, and for a reason. And this smooth Golf does it as well as any. But it has an unambitious comfort zone, and once out of it, things are not quite as strong.
There’s a sport setting on the gearbox, but it does not do sport. The engine is horribly harsh when revved above 3000rpm, delivering nothing, while the chassis lags behind steering inputs and changes in altitude, and things get quite discombobulated pretty quickly, with the body heading one way while the direction of travel is elsewhere.
While this is a car for many things, it is not for fun.
By Steve Moody
Logbook: Volkswagen Golf 1.5 eTSI DSG Style
Price £28,025 (£30,900 as tested)
Performance 1498cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 147bhp, 8.5sec 0-62mph, 139mph
Efficiency 49.5mpg (official), 40.1mpg (tested), 130g/km CO2
Energy cost 12.9p per mile
Miles this month 459
Total miles 1402
Month 2 living with a VW Golf: Mr. Coldfinger’s kiss of death
Nine pokes it took me to get it turned on. You’d think I’d be a bit more skilled after all these years.
I’m starting to think that the cold weather affects the efficacy of the Golf’s touchscreen, because first thing in the morning it’s grumpier than my wife with a hangover. This morning, just to switch the heated seat on, access the climate control, turn the temperature up high and sync it (again) with my phone, it took nine frustrating jabs with my finger, because half those thrusts didn’t land the requisite punch.
Oh for old-fashioned buttons, like the two I have to press every time I start the car to switch off the infernal lane-keeping assist…
By Steve Moody
Logbook: Volkswagen Golf 1.5 eTSI DSG Style
Price £28,025 (£30,900 as tested)
Performance 1498cc turbo four-cylinder, 147bhp, 8.5sec 0-62mph, 139mph
Efficiency 49.5mpg (official), 39.8mpg (tested), 130g/km CO2
Energy cost 13.1p per mile
Miles this month 189
Total miles 843
Month 1 living with a VW Golf: hello and welcome
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 official 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 mind-blowing. 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.
By Steve Moody
Logbook: Volkswagen Golf 1.5 eTSI DSG Style
Price £28,025 (£30,900 as tested)
Performance 1498cc turbo four-cylinder, 147bhp, 8.5sec 0-62mph, 139mph
Efficiency 49.5mpg (official), 38.9mpg (tested), 130g/km CO2
Energy cost 13.3p per mile
Miles this month 235
Total miles 321