Twenty Years of Golfin'

It was twenty years ago today, May 25, 2000, that I took delivery of my first new car, a 2000 Volkswagen Golf, fourth generation.  I got it in indigo blue, as seen below.

Since then, I have gotten a second Golf - a 2012 model, sixth generation.  Still in good shape after more than eight years.

Strictly speaking, anything I write about the Volkswagen Golf should be on my Golf blog. even if that blog is specifically about the eighth-generation model, but this time it's personal.  I have an emotional connection to the Golf, just like most people around the world have.  It's practical, efficient, and fun, and it performs and handles ever than most compact cars and as well as some sports cars.  It's a car that fits my independent spirit, and I find pleasure in driving a Golf even when in heavy traffic or making mundane trips to the store.  I obviously enjoy taking it on road trips, as it makes the journey as entertaining as the destination.  During this pandemic, I make fewer trips than I normally do, and I savor any chance to drive it, even if it's just to go across town to mail something at the post office.  I felt a connection to my maternal grandfather, who loved cars and loved to drive, the day I got my first Golf.  It was thirty years to the day after he died.

The Golf is an everyman's car, and an everyman's car that delivers the  sophisticated ride and engineering usually associated with more expensive cars.  As Scott Keogh, the current CEO of Volkswagen of America, says,  Volkswagen has "always been the people's brand, which means it's accessible. It's available. It's approachable. And the fact that you could get great technology and great quality at this great approachable people's price. That's the core of Volkswagen."

And yet, mouthed piety aside, Volkswagen of America has apparently decided not to offer the base version of the eighth-generation Golf (below) for sale in the United States.

Despite the popularity of SUVs and the general disregard for hatchbacks in this country, Volkswagen loyalists have remained committed to the Golf for years, even if the causal customers Volkswagen of America has been chasing for so long have not.  It is true that VW sold only five thousand units of the outgoing seventh-generation Golf in 2019, but sales of the car have always bounced back strongly when a new generation of the model is introduced.  It appeals to the core of VW customers - the same VW customers like myself, the die-hard loyalists have kept VW in business in the U.S. at times when it was tottering on the edge of irrelevance, or even leaving the U.S. market together.  We still appreciate the practicality and the fun of Volkswagen's universal hatchback, even if other Americans don't.

My devotion to the Golf is strong and ongoing, after two decades of owning two of them.  So I regard Volkswagen's decision to sell only the more prohibitively expensive GTI and R performance variants of the Mark 8 Golf in this country as a slap in the face, especially when Volkswagen of America is pushing more crossovers and sport utility vehicles to pander to mass American tastes while leaving us core VW customers with even fewer choices of the sorts of European-style cars we want.  Not just with the loss of the base Golf, but also with the inability to buy the Golf-sized ID.3 electric hatchback.  This is all unacceptable.  This is not the Volkswagen of America that existed two decades ago, when I bought my first new car, my first liquid-cooled VW and my first Golf.  Volkswagen of America's turn to mass American taste violates the spirit of the brand, as Jamie Kitman explains so brilliantly in this article from the September 2019 issue of Automobile magazine.

I will remain a Volkswagen customer.  I will take my car to my dealer for service and replace mechanical and cosmetic parts when necessary to keep my car in tip-top shape.  But until I can buy a base Golf again, I will not buy a new Volkswagen now or in the future.

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.    

Volkswagen's Worst Decisions For America

If Volkswagen of America decides not to offer the base version of the eighth-generation Golf hatchback - debuting in Germany this month - in the United States, it will be the latest in a series of stupid decisions made by either VW's U.S. division or the parent company with regard to the American market. Volkswagen is blessed with having a loyal, albeit small, base of American customers that will buy its European-style compact cars, even though such cars fell out of favor with mainstream America decades ago, but because of mainstream tastes we don't get a lot of cars Europeans are spoiled with.  But even when European compacts were popular among import buyers, VW would sometimes make a bad call.  Here's a list of some of the worst decisions Volkswagen AG or Volkswagen of America made for the U.S. market.

This list does not include the cheat software on TDI diesel engines, as that was a global issue.  Besides, that decision was so bad, it's in a class by itself.  But while other decisions regarding the U.S. market weren't as atrocious, they were bad enough.  And here they are:

The absence of a Type 3 notchback.  Volkswagen debuted its first notchback model (below) with the introduction of the Type 3 1500 at the 1961 Frankfurt Auto Show.  The Type 3 cars started out with reliability problems, and Volkswagen was smart to delay their American introduction until the 1966 model year.  But while the Fastback sedan and the Squareback wagon made it to these shores, the Notchback did not, despite the fact that Americans love the look and feel of a conventional three-box sedan.  It wasn't until 1980 that VW finally offered a conventionally styled sedan with the Jetta.  

The Americanization of the Rabbit.  The Volkswagen factory built at Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania to make the Rabbit (Mark 1 Golf) was an example of how it's not the idea but what you do with the idea that matters.  The Westmoreland factory was too big to break even making a low-cost subcompact, and that was the factory's Achilles heel.  But hope of any chance of Volkswagen having success with the American-built Rabbit - produced in Pennsylvania as a hedge against swings in exchange rates between the dollar and the German mark - was dashed when the Americans running the factory decided to water down the car's German characteristics and make it more appealing to Americans who normally bought Chevrolets.  The factory's managers, incidentally, came from General Motors.

As a result, interiors got gaudy, seats were flat, and the ride and handling were degraded.  In a sense, Volkswagen discontinued selling the Golf/Rabbit when it began making these Malibu-redolent Rabbits, because the real thing was gone.

When former Volkswagen of America president Carl Hahn became the CEO of the parent company in 1982, he had the Westmoreland factory go back to stiffer shocks and struts and more tasteful interiors, and the GTI was added to the U.S. lineup - six years after its European debut.  It wasn't enough to get enough Americans to buy the Rabbit or the second-generation Golf (produced at Westmoreland from 1984 to 1988) and keep the factory in business, but it probably saved the company's reputation in America for making driver's cars for the common people.

No Rallye Golf.  In the late eighties, Volkswagen created a super-high-performance version of its humble Golf hatchback during the car's second generation.  The Rallye Golf (above) was homologated  to allow Volkswagen to compete in the World Rally Championship auto race, and only five thousand such cars were made.  Among its goodies were a 160-horsepower supercharged engine, four-wheel-drive, electronically controlled anti-lock brakes, and fifteen-inch wheels and tires with flared fenders to accommodate them.  Jim Fuller, Volkswagen of America's senior vice president, championed the Rallye Golf's importation to the United States, but he was killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988.  Fuller's colleagues at Volkswagen of America, despite being impressed with the Rallye Golf when five of them were brought over to the U.S. in 1989 for evaluation, decided that it was too expensive to sell as a Volkswagen due to the brand's low-price reputation.  Yet Chevrolet, General Motors' low-price brand, had at the time the most expensive GM car available with the Corvette ZR-1.  And, unlike the ZR-1, the less expensive Rallye Golf seated five and had adequate cargo space.

Fifteen years later, Volkswagen of America brought over the Golf R32, the Rallye Golf's spiritual successor, and it proved that VW enthusiasts are happy to pay a premium for what is essentially a homologated version of an economy car.  Americans have only recently been able to bring over Rallye Golfs themselves, thanks to a law dictating that foreign cars not for sale in the United States can only be bought overseas and transported here once they're at least 25 years old.  And Rallye Golfs sell here for as much as they cost new.         

Where were the minivans?  Minivans aren't as hot as they used to be, thanks to sport utility vehicles, but Volkswagen either missed or screwed up opportunities to expand its minivan portfolio in America when they were popular.  And had VW not done so, things might have turned out differently for minivans in general and VW minivans in particular.

The Volkswagen Sharan, the second generation of which is shown above, was developed in the mid-nineties in concert with Ford for the European market - Ford's version was called the Galaxy - and Ford somehow convinced VW to promise not to sell the Sharan in the United States and give Ford's American minivans competition, even though Ford spent a generation demonstrating its inability to produce a good minivan - which may explain why it pushed the Explorer SUV and convinced gullible, ignorant Americans to buy one.  By the time Volkswagen came out with the second-generation Sharan, a vehicle developed without Ford's help, in 2010, Ford had withdrawn from the U.S. passenger minivan market and began importing its European Transit connect passenger minivan primarily to convert for commercial purposes.  With SUVs gaining popularity over minivans in general, the Mark 2 Sharan never had a chance of coming here.   

The Touran (above) was introduced in Europe in 2003, and it could have been a worthy competitor against the similarly executed Mazda 5, but Volkswagen of America didn't seem interested in bringing it over.  The Mazda 5 has since been discontinued in favor of crossovers.  Ironically, the similarly sized Ford Transit Connect is now available in passenger form.

Both the Sharan and the Touran are cool and funky, kind of like the Ford Transit Connect, and both could have set a new standard for passenger minivans in the United States, if only Volkswagen had brought them over and known how to market them.  But then, Volkswagen even couldn't figure out how to sell the modern Transporter here even when sales in the minivan segment - a segment VW had created - were at their peak, and that too was discontinued.  The only thing worse than Volkswagen being unable or unwilling to sell cool minivans in America would be if Volkswagen tried to sell a bland Chrysler minivan with a VW badge here.

The Volkswagen Routan.  Oh, yeah, right . . .

VW, what were you thinking?

The 2011 Jetta.  In an effort to make a Volkswagen that was cheap to buy, Volkswagen came out with an all-new sixth-generation Jetta (below) that was not only cheap, but cheapened.  The previous Jetta had merely looked like a Japanese car, but the all-new Mexican-made Jetta that debuted for 2011 rode like one.  The Chevrolet Cobalt's influence also figured in here.  The trunk hinges were oversized elliptical hinges that cut into the luggage space, the interior plastic was hard to the touch, and the handling was predictable and bland, thanks to its humdrum suspension.  It was as if Volkswagen had learned nothing from the Westmoreland Rabbit experience.

Improvements on the Mark 6 Jetta in subsequent model years made the car a competent and desirable performer, but it still remained a step or two behind the Golf.

Playing Polo games.  The Volkswagen Polo, VW's model for people who want something one size smaller than the Golf, has never been available in the U.S. or Canada, and the substandard-but-still-okay Fox, a Polo-sized car made in Brazil, is the closest we ever got to having it.  Until 2009, when, after denying its New World customers the chance to own this zippy, funky, attractive car,  shown above in its fifth generation, VW announced that it was coming to North America.  This was after previous promises to bring it over, but this time it looked like it was going to happen. And, as I noted earlier on this blog, I quickly started saving my money so I could be among the first on this continent to buy one. Despite earlier disappointments, this time was going to be different.

You know the rest.

In each case, Volkswagen has either tried to follow mainstream automotive trends in the United States, underestimated the potential of these products among VW loyalists and the potential to create new loyalist customers, or both.  VW has repeatedly decided that what works in Europe won't work in North America - especially in the U.S. - but doesn't seem to understand that VW customers in North America have tastes more in keeping with their European brethren than with other North Americans.  Instead, VW keeps aiming for bigger sales by trying to appeal to a mass audience that doesn't necessarily care for European-flavored mass-market-priced cars, and then it can't understand why such a strategy only brings in casual customers who eventually drift to another automaker for their next car purchase.  The decision not to sell the ID.3 in America is yet another insult to us Volkswagen die-hards; it's a decision based on what mainstream America, not American VW customers, want.  Volkswagen will never be a brand in the U.S. with the sales appeal of Chevrolet or Toyota, yet it won't settle for being only a niche brand with a loyal customer base.  The irony is that Volkswagen of America executives want to make the brand relevant in the U.S. again, yet the tastes of die-hard Volkswagen loyalists don't seem to matter to them.  If the standard Mark 8 Golf isn't sold in the United States, that could be the final insult for a lot of us.

Betta getta Jetta. :-(          

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.  

Golf White North

The good news is that buyers in North America will be able to purchase the base version of the eighth-generation Golf (below).  The bad news that these buyers are Canadian customers.  

Volkswagen Canada was adamant about keeping the base Golf in its lineup when it heard that Volkswagen of America - to which the Canadian division is usually joined to the hip - was thinking of selling only the more expensive GTI and R variants in North America, and Volkswagen AG responded favorably.  As much as I hope that the confirmation of the base Mark 8 Golf for north of the border means we could still get it on this side of the 49th parallel, we might still miss out on the car.  This wouldn't actually be the first time Canada has gotten cars we Americans haven't.  They got a Mercedes hatchback we never got, and Hyundai started selling cars in Canada four years before the brand debuted in the United States; its debut Canadian model was never sold here.  Heck, I remember seeing four-door Honda Civic hatchbacks on a trip to Canada when I was fifteen, when the U.S. got only two-door Civic hatchbacks.

And this wouldn't be the first time that the Canadians get a Volkswagen model that we Americans don't.  They got the Type 3 Notchback in the sixties; we only got the Fastback and Squareback.

It's also noteworthy that nearly three out of every four Golfs sold in Canada is a base model instead of a sport model; the opposite is true here, and Golfs account for only one out of ten Volkswagens sold in the U.S. while they account for one out of four sold in Canada.  It seems like Canada is joining the rest of the world on the base Golf, while the U.S. can't be bothered.  So think of the base Golf as the Paris Agreement of automobiles.

Meanwhile, Volkswagen is expanding its line of SUVs in America, and they now account for 54 percent of all vehicles VW sells here.  I'm pissed off.  I wonder how many other VW purists are pouring out their dinner over this.

There's still hope that the base eighth-generation Golf will still be available in the U.S. for the die-hard VW fans like myself who want one, but it's a slim chance at best.  I doubt that there's anyone at Volkswagen of America who's willing to fight for loyal base-Golf customers as there is in Volkswagen Canada.  I guess I'll have to hold on to my Mark 6 Golf for as long as I can if the base Mark 8 Golf doesn't get here.  And when my car wears out, expect to see me at a VW dealer in the Detroit area.

Specifically, in Windsor, Ontario.        

Buy a car in Canada and bring it back to the States?  It can be done.

A Decade of Fahrvergnügen

Today is a special anniversary for me. Ten years ago today I took delivery of the first new car I ever bought, my 2000 Volkswagen Golf GL three-door hatchback. And, as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I still have it. :-)

I've owned my Golf longer than any car I'd ever had before, and this one is coming up on 78,000 miles - low for a car of this age, you'll agree - for an average of 7800 miles per year. It still performs solidly, with a strong engine producing 115 horsepower, and the ride remains nice and taut. The latter point can be a disadvantage at times, given the increasingly atrocious condition of the streets and roads where I live. Handling is still precise, though, and the hatchback configuration provides versatility for carting things.

A little of my car has gotten worn - the stitches in the upholstery of the driver's seat cushion are worn away, the plastic veneer on my driver's door handle has peeled (a friend who owns a 2000 Jetta has made the same complaint) - but the rest of the car looks as good as new, with very little wear or tear apart from what I already described. I wash it regularly, I periodically polish it, and I'm always vacuuming and shining up the interior. More importantly, my VW runs as good as new, and that's no accident. I've taken relentlessly good care of the inner workings as much as the interior and exterior, getting it serviced regularly and having parts that stop working replaced. Nothing on my car that breaks stays broken for long.

I've had to get used to a few parts failing, alas. Volkswagen, once known for quality and reliability when their cars were rear-drive vehicles with rear-mounted aircooled engines, saw their quality slide in the late seventies and the eighties when they switched to making cars that were the exact opposite - cars with watercooled front engines driving the front wheels. VW's quality had dramatically improved when I bought my car ten years ago - a time when Volkswagen was enjoying its strongest sales in America since the early seventies - but it still had a way to go. As one of the VW religious - a "dubber" (Volkswagen, VW, Vee-Dub, 'Dub, hence, "dubber") - I have had to accept quality control problems on my own car, but that's the tradeoff you make when you buy with your heart rather than with your head. I still don't regret buying a Golf, because comparable Japanese cars were so boring and antiseptic to me. I'd just spent five years driving a Toyota Tercel at the time I bought my Golf, and though it was a competent car, it was also a boring one (and an underpowered one at that - I had to press the accelerator to the beat of Wilson Pickett's "Funky Broadway" to get it to speed up).

So what are my favorite memories my Golf? There have been pleasant day trips to Pennsylvania (including Longwood Gardens) in my car, not to mention a road trip to Rhode Island a few months after I bought it. Some of my commutes have been memorable too, as I've worked in different places over the years. There have been a couple of times when I had car trouble that brings back the kind of memories that I'd rather forget, so why bother with any of that? Mostly, though, any trip in a Golf - even when I had to drive home from work a couple of times in the snow - is a pleasure trip.

The Golf is the bestselling car in the world, but because it's a hatchback, it's not even the bestselling Volkswagen in America. That's fine. I feel cooler and more unique for bucking conventional American tastes. And a three-door hatchback is more appropriate for a single guy like me than a four-door trunked Jetta would be. I hope to keep this car another few years, and I hope VW still offers a comparable car when I'm ready to buy another new car. And their quality control has improved to the point where the Golf is considered a best buy by Consumer Reports.

Or maybe I'll keep this car longer than that. It's like an old friend, and these days most friendships don't last ten years. :-)

Just Move On Up!

I'm watching Volkswagen of America with great concern. Not because of their 18 percent sales drop last month; that's part and parcel of the recession. I'm more concerned about the possibility of the German character of its cars being compromised.

While VW will continue to sell its volume model, the Golf, in the U.S. market, and will even produce a second-generation New Beetle, the American division is going more in the direction of aping the Japanese strategy to increase its presence in the American market. That is, offer cars designed more for comfort than for driving. It turns out VW's new mid-size sedan, or NMS - I'll call it the Dasher, after Volkswagen's family car from the seventies, from now on - will be bigger than the Passat, not smaller, and it will compete directly with the Toyota Camry. The Dasher, to be built in Tennessee, will be just as well-appointed as the Camry and will likely perform and handle as well as the Camry.

Dude, if you want a Camry, get a Camry. Some American car buyers prefer the more refined and more finely engineered ride of a Passat.

Then there's Volkswagen's small up! car.

The up!, originally displayed at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 2007, was originally designed as a rear-engined, rear-drive small car in the spirit of the original Beetle. (No aircooling, though.) But because of concerns about the possible tail-happy behavior of a rear-engine car, and also to cut costs, the engine was moved to the front for the production version, driving the front wheels. Some wags have even suggested that VW erred on the side of conservatism in deference to the American market. The up! had been designed with the possibility of offering it in the U.S. in mind but Volkswagen hasn't committed to such an idea completely out of fear that it might be too small for American tastes.

If Volkswagen had had the same attitude toward the American market in the fifties that it has now, the Beetle might never had been sold here. Volkswagen didn't just change people's minds in the United States about foreign cars; the German company changed people's minds here about small cars, and it got Americans to appreciate the economy and frugality of a small, basic car like the Beetle. Plus, the taut suspension and stiff shocks the Beetle had and most of its watercooled, front-engine successors have had changed many American attitudes about how a car should ride.

The cheap gasoline of the past thirty years, alas, re-established American preferences for bigger and softer cars, and Toyota and Honda have been all too happy to follow suit with their ever bigger and softer Camry and Accord models, respectively. To be fair, their small Corolla and Civic models continue to be perennial favorites in America, though they're rather unexciting. That said, American-style engineering and Japanese banality are not what Volkswagen customers demand from their cars. VW became a part of the American landscape by letting the market come to them. I understand the need for car companies to respond to market demands, but there's a reason I'm a Volkswagen owner and chose a Golf over the Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic. I like driver's cars. If you just want a car to get from one place to another, you buy a Japanese or domestic car. If you want to enjoy the trip, you buy a Volkswagen. Will we still enjoy the trip once Volkswagen tries to Americanize or Nipponize its U.S. product? Volkswagen of America president Stefan Jacoby insists that the Dasher and the smaller subcompact positioned below the Golf - to be called the Polo but having little in common with the European model of the same name - will be Volkswagens in every sense of the brand name, but I'm skeptical.

I still have bad feelings about the Americanized Rabbit built in Pennsylvania in the early eighties.

As for the up!, which may actually get here in 2012, there should be a market for it here once gas prices go up again. (Oh, they will, man , they will!) And as far as I'm concerned . . .

Heck, I'd buy one! :-)

Updates

Some updates on stories I've posted here:

Volkswagen of America president Stefan Jacoby recently spoke to Crain's Automotive news and confirmed that a model smaller than the coming sixth-generation Golf will be added to Volkswagen's U.S. and Canadian lineups. It won't be the Polo that's now on sale, but it will be related to it. It should be something like a real Polo, in my humble opinion, as long as it's a real Volkswagen. The Golf will continue to be priced as an entry-level car in the U.S./Canadian market, under $19,000, as VW doesn't have its cheaper SEAT and Škoda brands available here even as the VW brand becomes a medium-priced brand back home.

Meanwhile, the new midsized VW to be built in Tennessee will be between the Jetta and Passat, and go more more directly against the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord.

Also, on Patrick Little's Family Web site: Much of the information contained on that since-discontinued page has since been transferred to Family Bandstand at www.familybandstand.com. It's a more streamlined site, and updates are available. If you've seen my record review site for the British band, you need to go to this site as well. :-)

Polo Play

A few months ago I reported that Volkswagen may bring their Polo model to the United States and Canada. Are they? The answer is yes . . . and no. Volkswagen wants to add an entry-level car for the U.S./Canadian market, but while the car we get will be called the Polo, it will likely be a Polo in name only. Instead of the authentic European model VW fans in North America have been craving for, we're likely to get a tall car like the Honda Fit, and possibly a small trunked sedan, with the Polo badge.

I'll reserve judgment on VW's proposed entry-level car for this market until I see the darn thing. In the meantime, I'm glad the sixth-generation Golf is coming soon. :-)

The Rabbit Died Again

Volkswagen, having returned to the Rabbit name for the Golf in the U.S. and Canada, will once again go back to the Golf name when the sixth-generation model goes on sale in those countries this fall.

Geez, can't Volkswagen of America make up their minds?