Our long-term Golf has left the building – all too soon

This is a bit of a turnaround because, if I am brutally honest, the 1.4 TSI would not have been my first choice of VW product to use for six months.

Not because there is anything wrong with a 1.4 TSI, but VW have such toys as the GTI and R in their garage. And it is human nature to want the good stuff right? But each and every day our Golf grew on us, so much so that we were very sad to see it leave.

The Golf VII offers a no-nonsense approach to everyday motoring, which is what I do a lot of, so perhaps the 1.4 TSI was the right choice after all. The car came with the slick-shifting double clutch seven-speed DSG gearbox that made grinding through the traffic to work and back an absolute pleasure.

And it did this without killing us at the fuel pumps either. In the just over 7 000km we travelled in the Golf, it averaged around the 7.0 litres per 100km mark and this meant our fuel costs equated only 99c per km. There wasn’t any other hiccup or cost or oil usage or anything that added to this bill either – the car never skipped a beat.

Yet it also had plenty of urge onboard; in fact, I believe quite a bit beyond what the 90kW of power at 5 000rpm and pleasant 200Nm of torque from 1500rpm to 4 000rpm offered on paper. This was backed up when we tested the car at the world-renowned Gerotek test facility west of Pretoria.

The Golf ran an impressive 0-100km/h time of 10.41 seconds, a quarter mile in 17.65 seconds at 132.98km/h, the 1km in
31.88 seconds at 168.47km/h, while only stopping at an above- claimed 211.58km/h true top speed. Many cars that produce more power than our Golf wish they could run like this.

As is the case these days, you can go crazy in the extras department and our Golf had some very nice-to-have extras in the form of light assist, leather seats, panoramic sunroof, media with iPod adapter, park distance control, bi-xenon headlights and composition media radio. And we went the extra mile and got tyre and wheel experts Yokohama SA and Turn 1 Wheels to fit us a set of smart-looking wheels to complete the package.

The VW Golf VII is one of the better all-round, everyday, long-term test cars we have had in a long time and though they don’t come cheap – our car started off at R300 500 and now costs R312 000 – you will only appreciate the value you are getting for your money when you own one.