Hatfield Volkswagen

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Driving Impressions

Driving a car where and how it was designed to be driven is ideal for exploring its capabilities, and its limits. In this instance, Germany's Autobahnen are both the proving ground and the everyday environment. And for a car this size, and with these powertrains, the Golf excels, easily cruising for kilometer after kilometer with the speedometer needle solidly in the low three digits. Wind noise, even at those seriously elevated speeds, was well muted; the most remarkable road-sourced sound, in fact, was the hiss of rainwater on the interior of the wheelwells.

Brakes are super critical in the Autobahn environment, too, given the propensity of the continent's version of a big rig or of a Trabant like subcompact to flick on the indicator lights and abruptly pull out into the fast lane. We found the brakes proved their worth, dragging the Golf down from triple-digit speeds to what felt like a snail's pace, 60 mph or so, time after time with zero drama. Pedal feel was solid throughout, as was the Golf's directional stability.

We found the Golf accelerates briskly with the standard 2.5-liter. Volkswagen claims a 0 60 mph time of 7.8 seconds for the five speed manual, 8.1 seconds for the six speed automatic. At highway speeds, the engine readily answered the gas pedal, even including at Autobahn rates until it ran out of steam around an indicated 122 mph (it's electronically limited to 125 mph). The manual transmission's five speeds are really all that's needed for everyday driving. Clutch engagement is smooth. Shift throws are comfortable, the linkage certain in its gear selection.

The Tiptronic delivers smooth transitions between gears whether left to its own or rowed by the driver.

Steering response is confident, if not markedly crisp. Handling in corners was mostly neutral, with understeer (where the car wants to go straight when the driver wants it to run) the dominant at the limit mode. The only shortfall in the ride will be a tendency, associated with all cars with a relative short wheelbase like the Golf, of the suspension to lope over pavement heaves common to the U.S.'s concrete roadways.

For people who've missed the opportunity to drive a car with a diesel engine operating with today's sophisticated technology, the TDI with its 2.0-liter diesel engine will be a pleasant surprise. It takes about a second longer to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph, a significant difference. Performance is comparable with either the standard six speed manual or the optional six speed DSG transmission. On urban freeways, throttle response was quick and linear, with little hint of turbo lag and the engine pulling strongly well past legal U.S. speeds, thanks to the diesel's hefty torque curve, although not as lively as the 2.5 liter much beyond 110 mph. The manual has two or three more gears than the diesel needs, thanks to its hefty torque curve. The DSG, however, is more than merely an automated manual. With one or the other of its dual clutches always engaged, it almost instantaneous shifts as slick as, or even slicker than a full automatic, making full use of its six speeds to produce a seamless delivery of optimized power to the front tires. The TDI model's 17 inch wheels wear lower profile tires and deliver more certain turn in. While handling is basically neutral, understeer appears in the TDI at the limit, which again is a bit higher than the limit of the 2.5-liter model.

Given the different worlds for which the Golf and its competition have been designed, the latter don't always feel as confidant at the absolute extremes of their respective performance envelops. The Cobalt's suspension, for example, is less sophisticated and not as balanced; where the Golf's thumps over broken pavement, the Cobalt's thuds and sometimes clunks. The Civic's ride and handling is comparable, if not showing quite the same confidence when pushed as hard. The Focus has more body lean in hard cornering, in part due to the narrower track (the distance between the tires side to side), by as much as two inches.

The new Golf splits the difference in fuel economy. The TDI, no surprise, tops them all, by as much as 9 miles per gallon in EPA's city test, against the Civic, and 13 mpg in the highway estimate, also against the Civic. The 2.5 liter gas engine also betters the Civic in the city rating but trails the Cobalt and the Focus in both, by as much as three mpg in the city, against the Cobalt, and as much as seven mpg in the highway, also against the Cobalt.

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