Bogeying the Golf

The Volkswagen Golf has been a hard sell in the United States since, back in its days with the Rabbit name, it gained a reputation for less-than-stellar reliability and Americans realized that they didn't really like hatchbacks once falling gas prices meant they didn't have to buy one. So my efforts to get Volkswagen of America to sell the eighth generation of the base Golf here are going to be tough - especially since I'm only one person and it's difficult to get anyone to join me.  The VW enthusiasts only care about the GTI or R, which are coming, and casual VW customers are too busy checking out Tiguans and Atlases.  And it turns out that Volkswagen may be undercutting its own product - not just in hatchback-hating America, but in Europe in other markets.  Its Tiguan SUV is actually gaining in  popularity in the Old Country, as is the European T-Cross SUV, and Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess is gambling more on electric vehicles, which threatens to challenge sales of the traditional, fossil-fuel-powered Golf.  And the inclusion of hybrids in the Golf lineup itself in Europe has muddied the waters further for the model, as evidenced by the very special Golf you see below.  

This is the all-new, eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf GTE, and as its name suggests, it's a plug-in hybrid high-performance model, and it may actually upstage the time-honored GTI.  Its 1.4-liter gasoline engine and 13-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery setup pack combine to produce 242 horsepower - more than the Mark 7 GTI produces - and its 0-60 time is supposed to eclipse the outgoing seventh-generation hot hatch.  The seventh-generation GTE was more of a sideline for VW than this one appears to be.  Rumors of the coming Mark 8 GTI's power are just that - rumors - and, though it's likely that the next GTI will be more powerful than the new GTE, the GTE suggests where Volkswagen is headed.  It's hoping to accentuate its electric-vehicle and hybrid portfolio in the coming decades as climate change becomes more of a reality and VW enthusiasts may start feeling guilty (you can't spell "guilty" without "GTI") over polluting the air with their hot hatches.

All of this suggests that VW's product is in flux as less traditional vehicles like SUVs and electric cars pick up more of the slack.  Hannover-based equity analyst Frank Schwope even said as much to Fortune magazine. "The Golf is falling behind and risks becoming obsolete, on the one hand due to the trend towards SUVs like the Tiguan and T-Cross and on the other with Diess betting so heavily on electric vehicles," he said.

So, VW seems to be undermining the very highway the Golf rides on.  But the Golf, still popular in Europe, isn't done yet - rumor has it that the possibility of Volkswagen of America president Scott Keogh adding the GTE to the U.S. lineup has been floated, though I'll believe it when I see it - and I still think the base version would do just fine if it's offered in the States.  American VW loyalist customers still regard the Golf as the embodiment of Volkswagen in the post-air-cooled age, and it showed in sales of the seventh-generation Golf in 2015, its first full calendar year of availability in the U.S. - 19,257 base Golfs were driven off the lots of American dealerships that year.  And though only 5,012 base Golfs have been sold in the U.S. so far for 2019, that may be due to a combination of the car's aging design, lack of advertising, and very limited availability - take it from someone who was considering a 2019 Golf and tried to find a dealership that had at least one (but I finally got the stalling problem fixed on my 2012 Golf, so I'm good).  As they did in 2015, American VW fans who want a quintessential European hatchback but don't want to cough up extra scratch for a GTI or an R will gladly purchase a new Mark 8 Golf the second it's available . . . if Keogh decides to offer it.  He hasn't made the final decision on that, and so the fight to bring it here goes on, thanks to my Facebook page.  

And it would be, to use Keogh's pet phrase, cool as hell if he did bring over the Mark 8 GTE while he was at it.  It would be the ultimate electric bunny. ;-)