10BEST CARS
It is easier to forgive an enemy than a friend. We understand if the inclusion of the Volkswagen Golf in this year’s 10Best, its 10th in a row, causes surprise, incredulity, or even the sort of sputtering indignation normally only displayed by raging lieutenants in buddy-cop movies. We fully acknowledge that this is a controversial decision and the mailroom is on standby and all vacation for our Backfires team has been canceled. But it is nevertheless the right one.
This has not been a good year for Volkswagen, any more than it has been for peace in the Middle East. We now know that Clean Diesel was, like David Hasselhoff’s music career, a cruel German joke. The emissions-cheating TDI engine scandal will haunt the brand for years and will almost certainly cost VW many billions in restitution. Affected owners have lost more than the mileage and performance the eventual fix will likely cost; they’ve also misplaced the moral superiority that came from being part of the solution. As smog goes up, smugness falls.
But we still love the Golf, dammit. The gasoline-powered derivatives are fully deserving of their place on our altar of greatness. As Volkswagen makes the Golf, so the Golf makes Volkswagen. This supremely engineered line of two- and four-door hatchbacks remains the crown jewel of the modular MQB architecture that underpins the group’s global volume. By our reckoning, no fewer than 21 distinct cars are built from this supremely versatile “matrix,” sold around the world wearing Audi, Škoda, and SEAT badges as well as VW roundels. But none of these is better than the Golf.
“Rarely reveals that it’s front-wheel drive.” –D. Sherman
It’s a true world car, one that raises the average by the simple math of its popularity and excellence. And the very ubiquity of the platform it sits on is critical to its success. This is what happens when you can spread billions in development costs across millions of sales. Unlike many Volkswagens of old—and some of today—the Golf works as well in the U.S. as it does anywhere else, as happy in Waco or Wilmington as it is back home in Wolfsburg.
The German love of hierarchy holds true as you ascend the range, each slightly more expensive variant offering enough extras to justify the price step. The GTI combines the base Golf’s impressive comfort and quality with the sharpness of a true sporting machine. If you spend $1495 more for the Performance package, you might not be able to feel the difference in its 220 horses over the stock 210, but you will notice the extra traction delivered by the electronically controlled limited-slip differential. Before you know it, you’ll be trying to marshal the funds to purchase the $36,470 Golf R, with 292 horsepower, four-wheel drive, and supercar-baiting real-world abilities.
For all the comedic charm of nouns like Schadenfreude, Flugplatz, and—of course—Ausfahrt, German is not the most poetic of languages. But, for us, Modularer Querbaukasten (modular transverse matrix, or MQB in VW-speak) is poetry to rival Goethe’s. Some aspects may have been untrue, but on the whole, it’s still beautiful.
How We’d Build It
The GTI delivers the best value of the Golf range. The S trim is the only one that includes the Clark Plaid seats, so that’s the obvious starting point. We’d gladly spend an extra $600 for a pair of rear doors, but we’ll skip the automatic transmission in favor of the six-speed manual. Adding $1495 to the bill for the Performance package would get us the electronically controlled differential and 10 more horsepower, and that’s where we’d stand pat, at $27,910.
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