A very Golf answer to a confusing issue

The Golf is a car everyone is comfortable with, writes Declan Colley.

Sat, 25 Aug, 2018 - 01:00

The Golf is a car everyone is comfortable with, writes Declan Colley.

There can be no doubt that the car industry in general is in a period of transition, largely thanks to the demonisation of diesel as a power source and the complete inability of regulators to agree on a coherent forward path for the eradication of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions from the cars we drive.

This has led to a state of stasis within the car industry because until global regulators come together to try and crack this inertia and move forward with an intelligible and rational — not to mention workable — plan which will allow manufacturers to rationalise the type of cars they will build on an ongoing basis and customers to have a comprehensible idea of what sorts of cars they can buy and live with, we are living in a nonsensical and confused environment.

Car makers don’t know whether they should be going all-electric, or whether they should be developing better hybrids, or making hugely efficient and clean petrol engines, or even — perish the thought — revisiting diesel, which is not as dead as we have been led to believe.

And hydrogen is not far away either.

Which horse do you back? Where do you invest the vast R&D dollars? A crazy situation then and one which appears to have no definitive answers.

For the buying public, the options are limited.

The choice of all-electric motoring is only really workable if you’ve a short commute with access to a charging point, or install a home charging point. If you chose the petrol or diesel options, you are facing ever-increasing motor tax bills.

So, for many people the only realistic choice is to buy a PHEV, or plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, and one of the best of these things that we have tried here at Examiner Motoring is this week’s tester, the Volkswagen Golf GTE.

The Golf, as we all know by now is the true ‘everyman’ car, bought by Billy, Jack, and Aaron, not to mention Liz, Jackie, and Constance.

From bus drivers to brain surgeons, the Golf is a car everyone is comfortable with. The GTE therefore presents them with a tax-friendly eco-warrior (sort of) which comes in very familiar clothes and is thus a friendly and welcoming thing.

In this guise, the car is powered by a regular 148 bhp four cylinder turbocharged 1.4 litre petrol engine which is a fine thing in its own right, but in this case bolstered by an electric motor which adds a further 101 bhp to the mix for a total system output of 201 bhp. The engine end of things will provide some 250 Nm of torque, while the combined engine/electric motor combo pushes that figure out to 350 Nm at given times.

The way it works is that the GTE always starts via the electric motor and, thanks to the automatic six speed dual clutch, will drive through its six ratios and can continue to do so up to 130km/h.

Quite when the regular engine kicks in depends on which of the five driving modes you choose. It possible to drive in electric mode only, although finding the way to do so involves a lot of rummaging around with various sub-menu options.

I did find that the GTE is actually capable and responsible enough to allow it do its own thing in terms of deciding which or all power sources to engage, so it is probably best to leave it to its own devices unless, of course, you are an inveterate fiddler and can’t help yourself tricking around with such things.

Worth noting though is that the car is considerably heavier than any of its siblings because of all this added technology — it is well over 200kg heavier than a GTi — and this does somewhat blunt the sporty notions of the GTE, although the car will still run the 0-100km/h dash in 7.6 seconds and top speed is just shy of 230km/h.

I found the car to be a very lively companion, albeit with the proviso that when everything is working in tandem, there is a lot of noise accompaniment and this can startle the unwary at times. Generally, however, the GTE is a very smooth and polished drive and the automatic ‘box undoubtedly contributes to this state of affairs.

Out on the open road, it handles largely like any Golf should but, in this instance, it is assisted by the fact the suspension is lower than on a normal Golf and it also rides on 18” wheels.

But, there is an obvious burden placed on the sporty suspension by all that added weight and as a result both handling and ride are blunted slightly, but not by much.

It is worth noting that the VW engineers, in an effort to reduce the demands on the car by all that extra tonnage, have lightened the GTE’s steering more than you might be used to in a conventional Golf and this solution makes the car every bit as pleasing to drive as its siblings.

Very little of the Golf’s renowned driveability has been lost here thanks to the thoughtful nature of certain aspects of the design.

On the inside, the GTE is very ‘Golf.’ In fact, if you were blindfolded before being put into the car and then took off said covering, you would immediately come to the conclusion you were in a Golf.

This has been a deliberate ploy by VW to keep things mainstream and normal, although they have added GTE-specific upholstery and blue stitching (as well as ambient lighting) to provide some individuality.

Specification is top drawer with everything from automatic lights to adaptive cruise control as standard here and the only option fitted to the tester was the metallic paint, which adds €601 to the bottom line.

In tax terms, the GTE fits (currently — as we may see changes in the forthcoming budget) into the A1 tax band for an annual tax bill of just €170. But, even with your SEAI grants and VRT rebates, this is still a premium price car, so prospective owners will have to weigh all that up before deciding the GTE is the way forward for them.

I’m not a fan of these things in general, but the GTE presented many more persuasive arguments for hybrid motoring than I’ve seen in quite a while, and I found there was a lot more going for this car in terms of driving enjoyment and pleasure than is on offer from direct competitors.