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.

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.