No Golf For Us?

A recent report from Automotive News seems to have confirmed earlier rumors that the next generation - the eighth - of the standard Volkswagen Golf will not come to the United States and maybe not even Canada.  Volkswagen of America is said to have definitively told its dealers that the standard Golf and the Golf wagon are being dropped from the lineup here.

The Mark 8 Golf, shown above at a McDonald's (yes, they have McDonald's over in Europe!) during testing, will be made exclusively in Germany, whereas U.S.-spec Golfs of the seventh generation have been made in Mexico.  It's no secret that Mexican-built Volkswagens cost less to bring over here than German-built VWs - no transoceanic shipping, lower labor costs - and with the GTI accounting for 42 percent of Golf sales in America, it's worth it for Volkswagen of America to import it, but after a brief enthusiasm in the sales charts for the base Golf when it debuted in America in the summer of 2014, sales of that car have plummeted, and Volkswagen of America appears to have decided that the car is so expensive, it's not worth bringing over from Wolfsburg.  And Trump's threatened tariffs on all imported cars isn't doing anyone any favors. 

However, the base Mark 8 Golf  could still come to the U.S., because it turns out that it's the best-selling Volkswagen in Canada. That's right, even Canadians like the base Golf better than we do.  But a source close to Volkswagen of America told Automotive News that "if VW Canada can make a business case for the car, it could continue in the U.S. and Canada."  Continued imports of the base Golf to Canada, therefore, would make in convenient for Volkswagen of America to offer the same car south of the 49th parallel.  Volkswagen of America and Volkswagen Canada have traditionally acted in concert with each other, so this is a positive development in an otherwise depressing story.

In the meantime, I chatted with someone online at Volkswagen of America to ask about this story and to express my displeasure with the mere suggestion of canceling the base Golf in America.  She assured me that the 2020 and 2021 model year lineups in America have not been finalized yet and that this media report is wrong.  So there's still hope for the base Golf in America for the eighth generation.  To all my fellow Golf fans, I urge you to keep your fingers crossed day and night that it comes and also 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. 

Golfless In America

As with every successive generation of the Volkswagen Golf, I have been following news about the upcoming eighth-generation model since development on it first began in Wolfsburg. I haven't been planning to buy one, but I know I might need a new car in the next few years.  When it became apparent that Volkswagen wouldn't have a two-door model for this generation, I accepted the reality that cars without rear passengers doors are fading into history.  When Volkswagen announced that so much computer technology was going into the new Golf - with all sorts of digital readouts on the instrument panel and numerous driver-assistance features - that even a standard Golf would cost a pretty penny like the GTI and the Golf R, I begrudgingly accepted that reality, too, because a standard Golf would still be more affordable than a GTI or Golf R.

Now comes word that the United States may not get a standard Golf at all when the eighth generation debuts.

WHAT???????????

The standard Mark 8 Volkswagen Golf, shown above in a spy photo, may not be available in American VW dealerships, even as the next GTI and Golf R variations are a definite part of VW's U.S. lineup.  The reason is quite simple; Americans hate basic hatchbacks, preferring SUVs and crossovers instead.  They still buy sport hatchbacks, but they can't be bothered with basic family hatchback sedans.  Or, for that matter, with traditional station wagons; the next iteration of the Golf wagon, the Golf wagon being the spiritual successor to the old VW Squareback of the sixties and seventies, may not make it here either.  And Volkswagen has obviously concluded that the Tiguan and the Atlas SUVs don't sell enough units to allow VW to continue offering the basic Golf as a loss leader.  (The Tiguan, by the way, is now Volkswagen's U.S. bestseller.)  Volkswagen of America has only sold about six thousand units of the 2019 standard seventh-generation model, and VW's American operation has acknowledged its unpopularity in These States in subtle ways.  At the 2019 New York Auto Show, only a Golf R was on the floor at the VW display, not a standard Golf.  The standard Golf isn't mentioned in today's American VW advertising.  And I'm willing to bet that when I take my own Mark 6 Golf to my dealer for service soon, I won't see a standard Mark 7 Golf in the showroom.      

This possible move to delete the standard Golf from VW's U.S. lineup is an abomination to every American VW loyalist who helped keep Volkswagen alive in this market the last time William Barr was Attorney General.  In the early nineties, when it looked like Volkswagen would have to quit the U.S. market, there were enough die-hard VW fans to sustain the brand, and a lot of us may have bought Jettas at the time, but many of us still bought Golfs - standard Golfs as well as GTIs - in appreciation of its hatchback versatility and in recognition of its importance to the brand.  To us, the standard Golf isn't just another Volkswagen - it is Volkswagen in the liquid-cooled-engine age and will remain so even after the I.D. electric vehicles debut in a few years.  Volkswagen without a standard Golf is like a hollow shell.  Don't get me wrong, I love the GTI and the R models, but I can't afford either one of them. And while I could easily adapt to a Jetta should I need a new car in the near future, it's a larger car than the Golf, and its not as versatile.  But I'll be damned if I buy a Tiguan.  I actually drove one as a loaner while my Golf was being repaired this past fall, and I just couldn't get into driving it.  I just don't like SUVs.  Sadly, I live in a country where practically everyone else does.

This isn't the first time there have been rumors of about the standard Golf being dropped from the U.S. lineup.  I remember similar rumors about the Mark 5 Golf - called the Rabbit in the United States, as the original Golf had been - being dropped in favor of the GTI, but that obviously didn't happen.  But back then, in 2006, SUVs, though popular, weren't as popular as they are now.  They now account for a solid majority of all new cars sold in America, and with even notchback sedans becoming less popular, Volkswagen sees no incentive to keep the standard Golf available to die-hard Golf fans who don't want to pay extra for a sport model and just want a decent city car to drive around in.

Right now, Volkswagen is trying to get the Mark 8 Golf ready for a debut at the biennial Frankfurt Motor Show, which I'll have to miss again on account of the fact that I still can't afford to travel to Germany to see it (aw, heck, it's only the nineteenth Frankfurt show in my adult life, and besides, there's always 2021). But Volkswagen may miss Frankfurt this year too.  See, VW is putting so much technology in the car - a 48-volt electrical system, a sophisticated touchscreen, and complicated computer systems - that it's having trouble getting everything to work right or work at all.  This means it might be ready too late to debut at Frankfurt.  To be honest, I started having doubts about this new Golf because of all this, but I was willing to give Volkswagen the benefit of said doubts and see how a standard Golf would turn out and whether it would still be reasonably priced, despite the fact that VW is looking to compete more with BMW than with Ford or Toyota with this car.  But if the standard Golf doesn't come to the States, whether or not the car meets my expectations will be a moot question.

As an American, I've long since grown tired of being denied some of the most exciting and interesting products of the European auto industry, especially products from Volkswagen, Europe's number one automaker.  We've never had the Polo in the U.S., the up! is too small for American streets, we never got the third-generation Scirocco (now discontinued), and there hasn't been a Transporter model available in These States since 2003.  And now we're going to miss out on a basic Golf?  Geez, even Canada, which also hasn't gotten any of the cars I just mentioned in this paragraph, is expected to get the standard Mark 8 Golf.  It's enough to make me want to move north of the border.  But then I'll at least be able to get a VW with a metric readout on the speedometer.

I now plan to keep my sixth-generation two-door Golf for as long as I possibly can.  And if it gets to the point where I need a new car and can't get a standard Golf, or even a Jetta, and I can't afford any  of VW's other regular-car models, well, I'd rather take the bus. 

The final decision on whether or not to include a standard Mark 8 Golf in Volkswagen's American lineup hasn't been made yet.  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 this horrible proposal not to offer it for sale here.  

Two-Door Cars Get the Coupe De Grace

When I was a toddler, my family's car was a 1968 Chevrolet "Chevy II" Nova.  Compact-sized for its day,  it was comfortable and practical enough when it was just for my parents and me, but when my sister was born, my mother and father decided that something bigger was in order.  So we all went to Reedman Chevrolet in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where we were living at the time - that dealership, now Reedman Toll, had such a huge showroom, it was like a permanent auto show - and before I knew it, we had a brand-new 1972 Chevrolet Concours station wagon.  The Chevelle-based wagon had more cargo space than the Nova, a longer wheelbase, and something I had been hoping for in our new car, as well as something any growing family needs - rear passenger doors.

The family Nova had been a two-door sedan.  My father had to push the front seat forward to let me into the back seat, though getting in was never an easy task. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I hated it. Now we had a new four-door station wagon and I could get into the back seat myself.  I remember thinking that when I grew up and had kids, my car would have rear passenger doors.

Ironically, I have only owned two-door cars.  Why?  Simple - I've never been married, and I've never sired children.  So a two-door car has always been perfect for a single guy like me.  I don't need rear passenger doors because I don't have any children who need easy access to the back seat.  In fact, I've rarely ferried rear-seat passengers in the five cars I've owned; I can count all of the people who ever rode in the back seat of my 2012 Volkswagen Golf, my current car, on zero fingers.  

So I was shocked, angry and mortified when I heard that Volkswagen is discontinuing the two-door Golf and GTI (below) in the U.S. beginning with the new 2017 model year.

Volkswagen is streamlining its U.S. lineup for 2017 to lower prices and simplify model variations.  The decision has nothing to do with the fallout from the diesel scandal, though that has in fact had a very negative impact on VW's U.S. sales for 2016 (and I'll talk more about that in another post).  The trend in the U.S. is simply moving heavily in favor of four-door models.  Volkswagen of America's marketing boss, Hendrik Muth, said as much recently.  Hardly surprisingly, this decision is not going to sit well with Golf purists like myself.  I don't like it one bit.  I always thought that the two-door Golf looks sportier and cooler than its four-door counterpart.  And the Golf GTI, which was exclusively a two-door car when it originally debuted (the first European model is shown below), has always been more appealing to me in two-door form, because four-door GTIs, available in Europe since the eighties and in the United States since 2005, have always seemed to me like compromises for people - usually dads - who need the easy rear-seat access.

But I don't need a ten-day sales report to see how traditional coupes and two-door sedans have fallen out of favor in America.  While some manufacturers persist in offering two-door cars, including Volkswagen itself (hello? the Beetle?), many car companies have scaled back their choices of two-door models, if they haven't eliminated them altogether.  Remember those old mid-size "personal luxury" coupes like the Chevrolet Monte Carlo and the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme?  That market is pretty much dead, just like Oldsmobile.  You could stand on a street corner for half an hour and see only a couple of two-door cars among the many sedans and SUVs passing by.   Even coupes have four doors now, including Volkswagens (the CC).

Oh yeah, the move away from two-door cars - including hatchbacks - isn't confined to the U.S.  Sales of two-door hatchbacks are also tanking in the Old Country, and the three French automakers - Peugeot, Renault, and Citroën - are pulling out of the market segment.  You know a quintessentially European car style is headed for extinction if the French automakers - who, remember, don't do business in the States these days - are abandoning it.  Ford has also been moving away from offering two-door hatchbacks in Europe, and the current Fiesta has only been available in four-door versions (hatchback and notchback) in the United States.  And the Asians?  Take note: My mother has a Honda Fit, and she could only get a four-door version.  It's not that Honda doesn't offer a two-door Fit in the United States.  It's that a two-door Fit doesn't exist and never has.

While two-door versions of the Golf and the GTI will continue to be available in Europe for awhile, their days in the home market may be numbered, as it appears that the next generation of the VW Polo - a car we Americans have never had the privilege of owning in any form - will be available only in four-door form.  Also, according to Left Lane News,  Rupert Stadler, the head of Audi, doesn't even seem to think two-door versions of the Polo-based A1 (not sold here, of course) and the Golf-based A3 (we only got the four-door versions), or even the two-door A3 convertible, are necessary. And by the way, Volkswagen canceled the two-door Jetta back in 1991.

As cars become more pragmatically designed, the negative-utopian vision of cars rendered dull and stodgy in the name of "safety" that Richard Foster predicted in his short story "A Nice Morning Drive" (which inspired the Rush song "Red Barchetta") appears to be coming true.  First two-door family cars disappear, then sports cars . . . we'll all be driving SUVs soon. But we still have cars like the Golf and the GTI, even if they're only available in the States now with the rear passenger doors we single guys equate with domesticity.  As for my 2012 two-door Golf, I'm going to hold onto it for as long as I can, before I have to get a four-door model.

And then I'll have to get married.

(Note:  Hatchbacks and station wagons are commonly referred to as three-door or five-door models, with the rear cargo door included in the count, but I referred to them here as two-door and four-door models for the sake of clarity, because whether with a hatch or with a trunk, all cars without rear passenger doors are affected by current sales trends.)