Vizzion Quest

Although Volkswagen of America is calling it a crossover, the I.D. Space Vizzion concept vehicle displayed at the 2019 Los Angeles Auto Show, on a fast track to become a production car in few years, is actually a wagon.

The I.D. Space Vizzion's name refers not to outer space (though it does look like a car George Jetson might drive if the cars on "The Jetsons" didn't fly) but to the vast space inside - plenty of room for four with space for additional third-row seating.  The seats themselves are upholstered with a faux-leather made of waste from apple-juice processing mixed with 20 percent polyurethane.  Outside, the sleek styling produces a drag coefficient of 0.24. Its performance as been rated at 275 horsepower from an electric motor on the rear axle that propels the I.D. Space Vizzion to 60 mph in five seconds, with an 82-kilowatt battery that can travel 300 miles on single charge.

But the fact that it's a wagon may be the biggest news . . . rivaled by the bombshell Volkswagen of America CEO Scott Keogh dropped at the Los Angeles Auto Show.  He thinks a backlash against sport utility vehicles is coming, and it's going to be led by the younger buyers entering the auto market against the older Baby Boomers and Generation Xers who made the SUV the modern American family car.  And the I.D. Space Vizzion - and its companion I.D. Vizzion sedan, first displayed at Geneva in 2018 and planned for production as the ID.5 - demonstrate how flexible the MEB electric platform is and how adaptable in can be to changing trends.

Volkswagen may very well be in good standing in the new-car market if Keogh's prediction comes true - and I obviously hope it does.  Incidentally, the MQB gasoline-powered platform is also adaptable to different models and styles, as it underpins both the Golf and the Tiguan, for example. I only hope the anti-SUV backlash comes sooner rather than later, the better to ensure more sensible electric cars for the U.S. market - and the base eighth-generation Golf. ;-)

Continue to keep with the Mark 8 Golf and its chances or inclusion in VW's U.S. lineup at my new blog.

A Tale of Two Volkswagens

If you need any proof that the United States can never become a country like the nations of Europe, by all means consider the cultural, not political, differences between them.  Don't bother with the differences between private health insurance and single-payer health insurance.  Instead, consider football versus soccer.  Sugary cereal versus muesli.  Clown-suit fashion versus stylish leisurewear.  Blockbuster movies versus cerebral dramatic films. 

The Volkswagen ID.3 versus the Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport.   

The Volkswagen ID.3 electric hatchback, which commenced production earlier this week in Zwickau, Germany, is designed to become for electric vehicles what the Beetle was to cars powered by aircooled internal-combustion engines and what the Golf and Rabbit have been to cars powered by watercooled internal-combustion engines.  It is meant to define and set the standard for motoring going into the 2020s and beyond.  Power from its battery is rated at 150 kilowatts producing 200 horsepower and 310 pound-feet of torque, on par with similarly sized gasoline-powered cars.  The transmission is a single-speed gearbox, and ranges are expected to be anywhere from 205 to 340 miles. This looks to be the world car that the Beetle and the Golf have been.

Except, of course, we Americans won't get it.

Volkswagen of America CEO Scott Keogh nixed the prospect of the ID.3 being sold in the United States, saying that there was no way for Volkswagen of America to make a decent profit from it.  Keogh says he thinks he made the right call; alas, this may be true.  Americans don't like to bother with smallness and efficiency when it comes to gas-powered compacts, so an electric compact priced at the equivalent of $33,000 is hardly going to get American car-buyers excited except us Europhile weirdos.  What's really galling is how the Germans see the ID.3 as a source of national pride and forward thinking - German Chancellor Angela Merkel was even on hand to witness the first ID.3s roll out of the Zwickau plant - while we wouldn't see such a similar American car as that.  If Ford or Fiat Chrysler ever comes up with a competitor for the Chevrolet Bolt, don't expect Donald Trump to be on hand for its debut.  (The Bolt debuted a month before Trump was elected President.)

Ironically, Trump would have felt right at home at the debut of a very different Volkswagen model that debuted at the firm's American factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee - the Atlas Cross Sport.

The Atlas Cross Sport is a smaller version of the standard Atlas sport utility vehicle, and it offers seating for five instead of seven.  Fuel economy with the two-liter turbo four is a respectable 22 miles per gallon (mpg) rating in combined city/highway driving. Don't let all of that fool you, though; the Atlas, whether in standard or Cross Sport form, is still a big, bulky SUV with a high-riding chassis, and its optional 3.6-liter VR6, which is likely to be a popular choice, delivers 19 mpg in combined city/highway driving. Despite the German brand name, this Volkswagen is very American - made, as Volkswagen of America and Keogh himself claim, by and for Americans.  Not for this American.  And, as I noted before, not for any American VW die-hard who prefers drivers' cars over monster wagons.  To me, the Atlas, whether in standard or Cross Sport form, feels and looks like an Explorer.  If you want an Explorer, you should go to Ford.

To be fair, Keogh is pushing electric vehicles as much as his boss in Germany, Volkswagen AG chairman Herbert Diess, is, as I've noted before; other electric vehicles are coming for America.  Also, Europeans are buying more SUVs, notably the Volkswagen Tiguan but also other VW models like the T-Roc and the T-Cross.  But the electric Volkswagen coming to our shores, the ID.4., is yet another bulky, cumbersome crossover with an awkward design that emphasizes size over agility, while the T-Roc and the T-Cross are SUVs that are smaller and, by sport-utility standards, more sensible - maybe too small and sensible for Americans.  The smaller SUVs Volkswagen has promised for this market look to be not so small and not so sensible.  

So, while Europeans look to a more practical motoring future, Americans seem to think the days of big, muscular, imposing highway cruisers - designed to carry bodies that are big, and, well, one out of three ain't bad - will go on forever.  (Size does matter!)  No progressive legislation proposed by Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren is going to change such a pathetic cultural attitude as our atrocious taste in cars.  And Volkswagen seems to be resigned to that.

*

You will notice that I haven't said anything specific about the upcoming Mark 8 Golf in this post.  I will bring it up on occasion in this space going forward, but for the bulk of my comments about the car and my ongoing efforts to get VW to send the base version of the car here, go to my new blog, "Bring The Base Mark 8 Golf To America!", where I'm drumming up support for the car to be added to VW's U.S. lineup.

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. ;-)  

The New Mark 8 Golf

The eighth generation of the Volkswagen Golf finally debuted this past Thursday in Wolfsburg in an event at the local soccer stadium there that sometimes felt like a movie premiere.  German actresses Emilia Schüle and Andrea Sawatzki were in attendance, as was Sawatzki's husband, actor Christian Berkel.  The biggest star in attendance was Giorgetto Giugiaro, the Italian car stylist who designed the original Golf (the Rabbit to Americans and Canadians), and he sketched a Mark 1 Golf in real time, creating an instant collectors item.  Finally, after all of the pomp and circumstance, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess presented the car that will be Volkswagen's global mainstay for at least the next six to seven years. 

The car's styling wasn't a complete surprise, though.  The German auto press got a hold of official pictures of the car and published them a day in advance.   Given that the car used to be called the Rabbit in America, it seems that someone let the bunny out of the bag.

As you can see, the spy photos taken of the new car while it was being developed were pretty spot-on.  It's a slight evolutionary change from the previous Golf, with wide, narrow headlights and subtle sculpted lines along the upper sides.  The real changes are inside; it has a digital instrument panel, an upright touchscreen, and "sliders," touch-sensitive controls to set the climate control system or to operate the sunroof.  Other controls are voice-activated, such as the power windows (I miss the old cranks!), and the transmission shifter is a little switch instead of a large lever.  The car can also communicate with other vehicles to alert you of an accident or road construction, and it also connects directly with Alexa and receives updates to the electronics from the Internet, not unlike updates for your personal computer.

All this tech is going to take some time to get used to, but of course, the 1975 Rabbit had so much technological advances over the old Beetle that it took a while for people to acclimate themselves to that car.  My only concern is that Volkswagen may have trouble getting everything working right in the first couple of model years.

Volkswagen has promised connectivity combined with fuel efficiency and modern convenience, saying that the Golf will continue to provide a desirable driving experience with all of the latest and most modern amenities.  The most common engine for the new Golf is likely to be a 1.5-liter turbo four, and hybrid and diesel powerplants will also be available.

As for its American debut . . . well, yeah, that's still up in the air.  Diess said that the car will be available in Germany and Austria in December, in rest of Europe in early 2020, and in the United States and other markets some time after.  But, as I've already made clear, only the GTI and the R are confirmed for the United States so far, and Scott Keogh continues to say that the base Golf remains under consideration.  But with most Americans never having been all that enamored with the Golf - maybe because of the American Rabbit's knack for burning motor oil, but also because it's a hatchback - and with more and more Yanks opting for sport utility vehicles, the base Mark 8 Golf may be as accessible for Americans as an Emilia Schüle movie.  I must admit, with all of the technology the latest Golf has, I'm not sure I can afford it, and I'm not so sure I want to bother with all of the high-tech features in it; also, I don't use Alexa.  But again, if all I can buy is the even more expensive GTI or R, then I might just keep my Mark 6 Golf (the stalling problem of which I finally got fixed for good) until it's old enough to qualify for historic license plates.  And at least I'll still have a car I can play my CDs in.

And if the base Mark 8 Golf does come to America, I'll keep an open mind about all of the high-tech features. It's estimated to cost the equivalent of $25,690 - pretty steep, about six grand more than what I paid for my Mark 6 Golf, but far less than I can expect to pay for a GTI.  The R?  Yeah, I don't even want to think about how much that will cost.  No . . . no, as always, the base Golf is all I want.  Maybe a base Golf of any generation isn't someone's idea of an enthusiast's car, but it gets me enthusiastic enough.  And if Volkswagen of America CEO Scott Keogh wants to get me enthused enough to buy a Volkswagen as my next new car, he'll decide to bring the base Mark 8 Golf over.

In that spirit, I've started a Facebook page to urge that the Mark 8 Golf be brought to the United States.  Please be nice to me and click "Like" on it. And call Volkswagen of America at 1-800-822-8987, 8 A.M. to 9 P.M. Eastern Time, from Monday to Friday, to urge that the base Golf 8 be included in VW's U.S. lineup.

Great Scott!

Here is a production version of the eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf, the world premiere of which is due next Thursday in Wolfsburg.  (The picture was nabbed by a resourceful chap in Slovakia.)  And whether or not the United States gets it in its VW lineup is still up in the air.  That was the message from Volkswagen of America as recently as this past Friday (October 12). 

The decision on that question, as always, rests with one man and one man only - Scott Keogh, Volkswagen of America's president and chief executive officer.  Other VW managers can persuade him one way or the other, but the final call is his alone to make.

Keogh (above) has been CEO of Volkswagen of America for a year now, and it remains to be seen how successful he will ultimately be in his job.  He has tough shoes to fill, given some of the legends among his predecessors, such as Carl Hahn, who built up the Volkswagen brand in North America in the early sixties (and later became chairman of Volkswagen AG, the only former Volkswagen of America president to achieve that position), J. Stuart Perkins, who succeeded Hahn and led Volkswagen to its best years during the era of the Beetle and later oversaw the transition to watercooled VW models, and Bill Young, who saved Volkswagen from oblivion in America with his insistence of better quality control from the factory in Mexico that began supplying cars to the U.S. and Canada in the early nineties.  Keogh has a tall order; he's faced with the task of keeping Volkswagen commercially successful in an era of sport-utility vehicles while having to balance that with the desires of America VW die-hards who prefer the traditional small hatchbacks and sedans that Volkswagen has long offered.

Right now, Keogh is pushing for more SUV models and even a pickup truck in Volkswagen's U.S. lineup, in order to appeal to those buyers (who make up seven out of ten new-vehicle customers), even as he has to decide on the base Golf's future in a market where hatchbacks are spectacularly unpopular but where loyal Volkswagen customers demand such a car because of their own tastes, which are outside the mainstream.  Keogh has talked up SUVs in the motoring press like a disc jockey talks up the latest Ariana Grande record on pop radio, but he's made it clear that hatchbacks won't be cut from the U.S. lineup entirely.  But which hatchbacks will stay?  He has sent signals that only the Golf GTI and Golf R, the Golf's performance variants, will stay in the U.S. market because he still wants to cater to VW "enthusiasts" - suggesting that no one could get enthusiastic or excited over a base Golf hatchback.  (I happen to be a VW  enthusiast who does.)  On the other hand, Keogh has also hinted that the base Mark 8 Golf is assured, despite the fact that it hasn't been confirmed.   

"We will be launching the Golf VIII," Keogh told Automobile magazine in May 2019, "which will be the next-gen and it will have a GTI, so we're 100 percent on board [with that model]. But right now the GTI is going to stay GTI. And the [eighth-generation version of that] will come, and it's going to be as cool as hell."

Koegh has already disappointed many VW enthusiasts in America by canceling the Golf wagon and giving a thumbs-down to the idea of the Golf-sized ID.3 electric hatchback for sale in North America.  (We're getting an electric crossover instead.) While I understand Keogh's desire to sell the more popular car styles to keep Volkswagen in business in America, I hope he remembers the loyalists - those of us who still bought VWs when consumer magazines told us not to, bought them during the depths of VW's misfortune in the early nineties, and stood by the brand even after the diesel scandal broke.  I hope he recognizes, as I told him in three separate letters (full disclosure), that the Golf embodies Volkswagen in the watercooled age and that the base car should remain in the U.S. lineup, with only enough cars for those who want it.  So maybe I should be happy that Keogh is trying to add a pickup truck to Volkswagen s North American lineup; a vehicle like that would certainly offset losses on every base Golf VW sells to loyal American customers who want the same car their German (and Canadian) counterparts get to buy.

My gut instinct is that Koegh would rather not take the base Golf out of the U.S. market, but he is aware of how poorly they sell not just against SUVs and sedans, but maybe even other hatchbacks, and his decision will ultimately be made based on the numbers.  If he can't justify keeping the base Golf in America, he'll drop it.  If he can find a way to include it in the U.S. lineup going forward, he'll keep it. 

That said, I leave you with this.  Scott Keogh says he wants to make Volkswagen matter in the U.S. again, though it's always mattered to the VW loyalists here.  So, a lot of us will be watching every move he makes with baited breath.  Especially his next one.    

Golf Shot

After all indications pointed to the Volkswagen Golf Variant station being dropped with the coming of the car's eighth generation,  VW confirmed that, uh, actually, a station wagon will be in the Mark 8 Golf lineup after all.  I presume it will look much like the outgoing Mark 7 Golf wagon (shown below).  

The Mark 8 Golf wagon won't come to the United States, as sport utility vehicles have taken over in this market and actually account for 52 percent of VW's U.S. sales, but it will likely be available in Canada, where compact VW wagons are still popular and where the four-door base hatchback has already been confirmed.  This recent development may actually make it seem less likely that the base hatchback is included in the U.S. lineup when the eighth generation arrives.  I suppose that, if I want a base Mark 8 Golf, I could go north of the border, buy one, and bring it back to the States, but after all of the costs to federalize it for American roads, it might be less expensive to buy a GTI.

And while all this is going on, Volkswagen has suggested that maybe, just maybe, the electric ID.3 hatchback can be sold in North America after all . . . but only in Canada.  Here in the States?  Absolutely not.  As a hatchback buyer,  I clearly live in the wrong country.  It's also becoming obvious that, after decades of being lock and step with American automotive tastes, Canadian tastes in cars are beginning to diverge from such tastes south of the 49th parallel. 

Meanwhile, I have persistently written Scott Keogh, the president of Volkswagen of America, to urge him to include the base Mark 8 Golf in Volkswagen's U.S. lineup every time a development in VW's plans for the base Golf are updated.  I wrote him thrice - the first time to protest the possible discontinuation of the base Golf in the U.S. market when Motor1.com first reported it as fact rather than as the rumor it is, a second time after the wagon was dropped, and, more recently, a third time after the base Golf was confirmed for Canada, which I saw as a hopeful sign for the car's American availability.  In each case a spokesman for Keogh has called me personally (another hopeful sign) to thank me for my input and for my loyalty and passion for the brand and the Golf, and also to say that, while no decision has been made on the base Mark 8 Golf yet, I have indeed been heard.  Online and on-call representatives at VW Customer Care have heard from me too.

But I'm only one person.  The people at Volkswagen of America aren't going to keep the base Golf in its lineup after 2020 just because I want them to.  That's why I keep reminding VW fans on Facebook and here on my blog that more of us have to speak up and press for the base Golf to remain in the U.S. lineup.  So go here to contact someone at Volkswagen of America online, or call Volkswagen of America at 1-800-822-8987, 8 A.M. to 9 P.M. Eastern Time, from Monday to Friday, to urge that the base Golf be continued in VW's U.S. lineup when the Mark 8 (below) comes out.  The eighth-generation car is due for its world premiere in the coming month.  It's crunch time.

It's crunch time for me too, personally.  My 2012 Golf has repeatedly stalled at stops while I'm on the road, and repeated efforts to have it fixed have so far failed.  I can't understand why such a simple problem can't be resolved.  I want to keep my car, but that might not be possible.  If I can't get it properly fixed, I'll have to get rid of it, and of course I hope to get another Golf in its place, but in that case I'd better act fast while I still have a chance to buy a new Golf from a VW dealer - and American dealerships, of course, keep so few of them in stock.  If I end up having to get another car and I don't get a new Golf soon, it may be too late. >:-(

If I do get a new Golf, though, this much is certain - it won't be a two-door model.  The two-door Golf of the outgoing seventh generation has already been dropped in North America, and the eighth generation won't have a two-door version available anywhere in the world - the two-door Golf is being dropped completely.  

Why We Can't Have Nice Things (From Volkswagen)

Volkswagen's new ID.3 electric hatchback (below), which is about the same size as the Golf, is compact, technologically advanced, incredibly futuristic, and ergonomically friendly for driver and passenger alike.  It's a Tesla for the masses.

And we in North America aren't getting it. 

If you live in North America and you want an electric VW, it's either going to be a Microbus-styled minivan (fine) or a crossover (not fine, given that crossovers always look like station wagons designed by a committee).  Volkswagen of America's current president, Scott Keogh, says he regrets his decision not to offer the ID.3 in the New World on emotional grounds - he says his company car is an e-Golf - but he's satisfied with his decision on business grounds.  He says the compact hatchback class is simply too insignificant in North America to offer a $33,000 electric car in the segment for sale at a profit or even as a loss leader.

The same, of course, goes for the Polo, a car Volkswagen has manufactured since 1975 and has never been sold in the United States or Canada.  VW came close to selling it in North America after the 2008 financial crisis and a spike in gas prices.  My fourth-generation Golf was beginning to wear out.  A new fifth-generation Polo was coming.  I was ready to buy it!  I wanted it!  But it didn't come.  Gas prices went down, and so did the demand for small cars, even though the small-car market hadn't evaporated completely.  After all, Ford had the Fiesta and General Motors had the Chevrolet Sonic.

When the sixth generation of the Polo (above) came out in late 2017, Juergen Stackmann, the guy in charge of global sales at Volkswagen, explained why the U.S. wouldn't get it. "It doesn't make too much sense for us to bring a car like this, which has the substance of a class higher, into a segment that is so price driven in America," he said, explaining that the Fiesta, the Sonic and other subcompacts of the Polo's ilk cost less, and that the Polo was simply to well-appointed and too expensive to compete against them.  Since then, the Fiesta - a nice little car but one that was notoriously unreliable - has been discontinued, as the U.S. market becomes more dominated daily by SUVs and light trucks, though the Sonic remains available going into 2020.

Volkswagen itself is concentrating more on SUVs in the U.S. (and Canada) because, we are told, Americans like SUVs.  I don't.  I hate them with a cold passion.  And long-time Volkswagen customers don't like them very much either.  The people buying Atlases and Tiguans - now comprising 54 percent of Volkswagen's American customers! - aren't VW enthusiasts.  They're flexible buyers with no brand loyalty who could just as easily have bought a Ford Explorer or a Honda Pilot.  Volkswagen is a brand for people who love to drive; SUV customers aren't engaged in driving any more than they have to be. For them, driving is just turning a steering wheel and knowing when to stop for a light.  They buy SUVs because they want a family room on wheels. Complete with a TV screen for the kiddies. >:-(

Selling SUVs to suburban rubes was fine so long as Volkswagen of America pleased its loyal customers with small, nimble, economical driver's cars - the sort of cars that made Volkswagen so beloved in America in the first place - but Volkswagen of America seems to have walked away from all that.  The ID.3 may have more technology than I want, but its small size and its thoughtful layout would be a winner for Americans and Canadians who want that sort of vehicle.  The current Polo has the room and nimbleness of my mother's Honda Fit and the performance of my Golf - with a variety of engines to choose from, many of which have three cylinders.   A lot of us would be willing to pay more for a car like the ID.3 or the Polo because we find them that desirable.  But if Scott Keogh or anyone else doesn't think VW can sell enough of these cars in America and still offset its losses with all of those bug ugly wagons it's pushing, how can we convince anyone at the company to satisfy our preferences?

And then there's the base Mark 8 Golf (above).  You know the story; I won't repeat it.  Not being able to buy a Volkswagen you want because it isn't and/or never has been available here, like a Polo or an ID.3, is bad enough.  But the idea of dropping from the U.S. lineup a car that has been available in the States for 45 years, the only car I ever bought new, once in 2000 and again in 2012 - that's too much.  I'm not asking for the Polo or the ID.3 (not anymore, or at least not for now), but I continue to lobby Volkswagen of America to keep the base Golf in the U.S. lineup (and you know already about Canada), and I've even written to Wolfsburg, urging the parent company to ensure that Volkswagen of America continues to make the base Golf available in the U.S.

Maybe we can't have the quirkier, smaller and more interesting Volkswagens not sold on this side of the pond, but we should still have the base Golf, because there are still those of us VW loyalists who prefer hatchbacks and can't afford either a Golf GTI or a Golf R.  We have to stir things up and make some damn noise.  Contact Volkswagen of America at 1-800-822-8987, 8 A.M. to 9 P.M. Eastern Time, from Monday to Friday, and let them know that we VW fans won't stand for the base Golf being dropped when the eighth generation arrives.