Meet the Volkswagen Golf Mark Six. Is it a Mark Five with a Scirocco nose? Not quite, but that's broadly what it looks like. (We've also seen the GTI version; no pics are available but it looks promising.)
Then you notice what designer Klaus Bischoff describes as a more relaxed beltline, more convex to reduce the wedginess, plus the chunkier rear shoulders. It's subtle stuff, though, not least because the platform is changed little over its predecessor's and even the openings for the doors and the windscreen are the same. It's a reskin job and a refit of the cabin.
It is also, still, very clearly a Golf. Design director Walter de'Silva explains: 'A Volkswagen needs to be very simple and timeless. It's not simple to design something simple, but if we don't there's a danger of losing our strong identity with so many rivals. It must be unique, so it can be recognised globally, and not carried along by trends.'
De'Silva regards the first- and fourth-generation Golfs as the 'iconic' ones, visually. A common theme was the horizontal front grille, ousted in Golf Five by a flattened, shield-shaped grille which 'has now run its course', and reinvented for Golf Six. But a grille alone isn't enough. What else is it that makes a Golf still a Golf?
'It is not an exercise in style. It is practical and functional. Everything is defined with strict precision. That is the difference between the Golf and other cars. The time of over-designing a car has been and gone. It's a dead end.'
The cabin, again, is clearly Golf-like but the perceived quality is much improved. The Mark Four was a benchmark here, to the extent that it redefined quality perceptions in the whole hatchback sector. Trouble was, it cost too much to make so Volkswagen cheapened it for Golf Five, claiming instead to have spent the money on the expensive Ford Focus-like rear suspension.
It backfired: customers thought the Golf Five poor value for money, with an interior no better than those of cheaper rivals, and Volkswagen was forced to up the standard equipment levels to compensate. 'The Golf Five was a great drive,' says Bischoff, 'but some customers wouldn't notice.'
This time, it looks and feels plush again – but it's yet cheaper to make thanks to close paring of parts counts and production costs. Bischoff again: 'We'd have meetings to discuss every part. We'd put a door panel on the table, and one from the cheapest car in the class, and compare them. If four screws could last forever, we didn't need six or eight so we could save time and money. Golf Six is possibly 15 to 20 per cent cheaper to make than Golf Five.'
The new Golf has a more 'driver-focused' facia than the last one, with the console swept up in the boundary of the instrument panel – which brings us to the GTI. Evo saw a design-freeze model (no cameras allowed) in metallic white with gigantic 19in wheels whose five inter-spoke holes each resembled the outline of a Bugatti radiator. The white might make production but spraying it consistently is difficult.
The nose features LED lights outlining the main double-unit headlamps, a deeper and wider bumper/valance with Audi R8-like strakes in the outer vents, honeycomb upper and lower grilles, and a red line across the top and the bottom of the upper grille. At the tail, nestling within a diffuser-like valance, are two tailpipes spaced widely apart for visual symmetry. The tail lights have a strip across their base which includes the indicator and either the reversing light or the rear foglight.
UK sales of the new Golf range, whose engine line-up will be much as today's cars, start at the end of the year. The GTI arrives next summer. Golf Six is looking good, and Klaus Bischoff is relieved that it's finished after his department had to redesign all the upcoming new Volkswagens is record time because new chief Martin Winterkorn didn't like their design direction. So, how different is the car seen here from the first attempt at Golf Six? 'I'd rather not revisit that grave,' says Bischoff.
Source: Evo U.K
