Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Is the 2010 Volkswagen Golf a Retro Car?

Well, the answer to the question "is the 2010 Volkswagen Golf a Retro car" is probably "no". But, if you compare the 2010 (Mk6, left) Golf with its predecessor (Mk5, right) you start to wonder which car actually is more modern. The new Golf is a quite conservative design and probably the right answer to the needs of the typical buyer. The older Mk5 Golf was a much braver move with new lines. To be fair, I never fully liked the Mk5 Golf despite the fact that I owned one for a year. But the development from the older to the new car seems to reflect the new Volkswagen design strategy: straight lines and no experiments. The new Volkswagen Passat expected for towards the end of 2010 will bring more of this. Maybe these cars are "too big to fail" and this explains the styling philosophy.

1 comment:

lupoch said...

The hatchback segment is not growing fast compred to mini-vans, mini-SUVs, coupés and other cross-overs. But it's still the largest volume, so VW must keep re-doing the standard Golf while enriching the Golf family with Tourans, Tiguans, Golf-Plus, Sciroccos etc. to participate to the growth.