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. ;-)  

Der Kaput Variant

Volkswagen of America confirmed the GTI and R versions of the next Golf for the United States not too long ago, but left decisions on the base Golf and the wagon versions - or variants, as the wagons are known in Germany - for later. Well, the decision has been made regarding the Golf Sportwagen (below) and the four-wheel-drive Alltrack version.  The 2019 model year will be the last for both.  VW will continue to make the wagon versions of the current seventh Golf generation through December in Mexico, but that's it.

What's going to take their place?  More SUVs and crossovers, of course! 

Come 2020, for the first time in my life - the Type 3 Squareback wagon was introduced for the 1966 model year at the same time I was born - Volkswagen will not have a station wagon in its U.S. lineup.  And there many not be a wagon version of the Golf for anyone when the eighth generation arrives (though the wagon version of the B-platform Passat sold in Europe continues), so it looks increasingly like a four-door hatchback will be the model's only body style.  The Sportsvan version of the Golf (below), which is not sold in America, is also being discontinued.

A station wagon version of the Golf has been part of Volkswagen's lineup since the third generation, as the picture of the Mark 3 Golf Variant shown below indicates.  Passat wagons had been available in the United States from 1974 to 2010 (first called the Dasher, then called the Quantum), succeeding the old Squareback and Type 4 wagons, while the Golf Variant arrived here with the fourth generation as a Jetta model.  And of course, there was a wagon version of the late eighties/early nineties Fox subcompact.  Many VW fans, by the way, saw the Jetta wagon (which adopted the Golf nameplate here with the current generation) as the spiritual successor to the old Squareback despite the fact that the Jetta wagon had neither a front trunk nor a rear-mounted engine.  More recently, the Golf Alltrack was meant to be a competitor to the Subaru Outback, the midsize four-wheel-drive station wagon that many Subaru customers saw as a a sensible alternative to an SUV.  Alas, VW couldn't convince enough Subaru customers to switch brands and it couldn't convince enough VW customers to consider an Alltrack.  Not that it tried hard enough once the Atlas started rolling off the assembly line in Tennessee. 

To be honest, though, I am not shedding many tears over this news.  I have never needed a station wagon, though I drove the old 1973 Toyota Corona station wagon my family had when I was in college.  (When we gave it up in 1987, it was at a junk yard; we got ten bucks for it.)  And truth be told, no one likes station wagons because they're boring cars.  Sure, there have been sport wagons like the old Audi Avant, but most people who ever owned a wagon ended up with a bulky, unsexy hauler.  The whole ethos of the station wagon and its association with boredom  - especially long, boring rides - were perfectly summed up in the 1983 movie National Lampoon's Vacation, where the Griswold family, hoping to get a sport-wagon model, is forced to settle for a horrid, awkward Wagon Queen Family Truckster (actually a Ford Country Squire until Hollywood auto customizer George Barris got his hands on it), the sort of vehicle that no self-respecting middle-class suburbanite wants to be seen in.  It's also worth noting that once the minivan became popular, wagon versions of sedans became fewer and farther between.  Note that not one car line introduced by Chrysler after the original Dodge Aries, Plymouth Reliant, and second-generation Chrysler LeBaron K-car lines of the early 1980s has included a wagon version, except a wagon version of the original Dodge Charger sedan, the 2005-08 Dodge Magnum, which was a flop.  And GM and Ford have spent less time developing traditional wagons as well in the past few decades, and they're now at the point where they don't offer them anymore.

No, today, people drive sport utility vehicles, because they're so masculine and have a commanding ground clearance.  Or crossovers, because they're so elegant and stylish.  But you know what would end the insufferable SUV/crossover craze in America, aside from a bunch of Iranian imams blocking the Strait of Hormuz (any day now, thanks to their punitive acts against British tankers)?  All someone with a bigger megaphone than I have has to do is say to SUV and crossover owners, "You realize you're driving a pretentious station wagon, right?"

The emperor has no clothes.

Meanwhile, VW could be discontinuing the base Golf hatchback in the U.S., and if it continues to break tradition by pandering to mainstream American tastes, I wouldn't be surprised to see one of its sedans biting the dust.  If Volkswagen becomes just another SUV/crossover brand in this country, I may have to leave America just so I can buy the sort of car I want.  But I won't go to Britain (where station wagons are called estates), now that Boris Johnson is in charge.

I Shrug At the Atlas

Volkswagen's new intermediate sport utility vehicle - the Atlas - is finally out.

It's quite stylish, and it's solidly Germanic, even though it's built in Tennessee.  It gets decent gas mileage and seats seven in comfort.  And it has some rather funny commercials for it, including this risqué ad below about how procreating in little Volkswagens leads to trading up to bigger Volkswagens.

And I could care less.

The truth is, I'm still not impressed by SUVs, not even Volkswagen SUVs.  My lack of interest is not just due to the fact that I don't need one; it's also due to the fact that I continue to regard wagons built on light-truck chassis as being completely unnecessary and irrational except for those who live out in the country and need the toughness and the durability of a light passenger truck (farmers, ranchers, et. al.).  When I was a kid, growing up in the New Jersey suburbs, only outdoorsmen owned SUVs (they weren't called SUVs back then, though), and those SUVs that were in production were mostly from entry-level, not premium, brands.  Now it seems that every brand offers an SUV - even Porsche - and they're more for stockbrokers than for deer hunters.

I understand that Volkswagen is bringing out this midsize SUV to bring more customers into VW dealerships, as passenger-car segments like hatchbacks, wagons, minivans and now even family sedans are falling behind and SUV sales keep rising with no ceiling in sight.  Not only does VW feel that it needs the Atlas to compete in today's U.S./Canadian market, it wants to put the diesel scandal as far behind it as possible.  But Volkswagen is betraying the market strategy that was so effective for the brand in North America in the first place - that is, offer a car that has no obvious market, as was with the Beetle in 1949, and let the market come to Volkswagen rather than have Volkswagen pander to the market.  Not a way to sell cars in big numbers - Volkswagen sales have never been more than about six percent of the market in These States - but a respectable way to make a name for oneself.  Remember, VW invented a market segment other car companies later exploited to more greater effect - the minivan -  and didn't do too badly with its Transporters here.  If I needed a seven-passenger vehicle, I'd prefer a Transporter minivan over an SUV.  Too bad Volkswagen hasn't sold a passenger van in the U.S. and Canada since 2002 (unless you count the Chrysler-made Routan, which I absolutely don't!).       

Oh yeah, the sixth-generation Polo is coming out, and I have very good news for Americans and Canadians - if you're going to Europe, you can rent one.  Too bad you still can't buy one at home.

I guess we're going to have to get used to Volkswagen's North American strategy - give the people what they want in the form of SUVs and let those vehicles make money so the company can continue to offer traditional Volkswagen models to North American VW enthusiasts, like the Golf and the coming Arteon four-door coupe (I'll get to that, as well as get to the forbidden-fruit Polo, later), as loss leaders.  And while tastes may change, the American predilection for SUVs, pickups, and so-called crossovers shows no sign of abating.  That's why Toyota has a new compact crossover with a rakish, sporting profile, the C-HR, an ad for which is below.  The commercial retells the story of Cinderella in a modern context,  depicting Cinderella as a fashion-house worker who can't go to the fashion show with her two mean coworkers and her snooty boss, i.e., the stepsisters and the stepmother, respectively.  My friend Catherine Roberts, a veteran model, plays the boss.

Clever. 

Hey, Catherine is one of my dearest friends.  I love the woman.  In fact, I love this ad she's in.  But not even she can persuade me to buy a Toyota crossover.  Why?  Because it's a Toyota.  And it's a crossover.

Volkswagen has made it clear that it thinks it has to offer more SUVs in the U.S. and Canada if the brand is going to thrive in both countries. But once upon a time, on this very continent, Volkswagen didn't need to sell cars that pandered to mainstream tastes to succeed.  And that's no fairy tale.