Golf Plus road test - Volkswagen Golf Plus Car Review

A Golf – a normal Golf – handles with poise and composure. So it was a surprise that the Golf Plus, by comparison, felt a little wobbly on motorways and a touch twitchy through sweeping corners.  

But in all other aspects, the Golf Plus benefits from every Volkswagen and Golf quality you would hope for: strong seat materials, solid buttons and switches, easy-to-use entertainment and air conditioning systems, refined engines.

So I wondered for sometime why anyone bought it over the normal Golf when an email dropped into my inbox from my cousin Kristy-Jane. Regrettably, she said, she had to let her Golf Plus go because of a change in job. She seemed genuinely upset to be losing her “beloved Golf Plus.”

 

 

Apparently it’s ‘nice and girlie’ by which she really meant, nice and ‘Mumsy.’ The key benefits to Kristy are that it, “looks like a small car but is very roomy inside with lots of unexpected storage... Like a mini-MPV (but still) nice to drive.”

So there you go, never trust a car journalist, to this Mum, the car’s handling wasn’t wobbly at all. It’s not even a factor – but the ability to easily load children’s seats and pushchairs is. If you are a parent the Golf Plus should be on your list of next cars.

But, don’t write my advice off completely at this stage; buy a manual.

The Volkswagen DSG automatic gearbox looks whizzy on the advert and knowing that it costs £1,300+ to be fitted when new seems like a good idea. But it is slow to engage reverse and lumpy when driving around town, struggling to decide when to down change from 3^rd to 1^st if the car’s speed is only dropping very slowly (because you are coming up to the back of a slow moving queue of traffic).

Pulling away there can be delays too; the only time that it works really well is in sport mode. It gives a much bigger range of revs to each gear – not so good for economy, but adds a raspy-ness to the engine note as it gets nearer the red line and makes things a lot more lively. Great fun in a Golf Sport perhaps but not really appropriate to this car or its audience.

Given the greater likelihood of a repair bill in the long term from the DSG automatic boxes and its minimal impact on used car value (although some dealers may try to over charge you for it), the manual is the right decision if you plan to own the car for more than a year or two. If you plan to sell it on quicker, don’t do much city driving or just don’t mind about the small compromise in smoothness then you might be right to take the DSG option.  

 

 

There are 5 or 600 Golf Plus’ on the market compared to around 6,000 conventional Golfs (up to 2005 when the Plus came out). They are mainly diesels (3 for every petrol on the market) but there are plenty of petrols too.

The prices are very similar to conventional Golfs, with the most popular Plus being the 1.6 petrol and 1.9 diesel. Deprecaition is steady, in the mid teens across the range, albeit there is a peak at M.O.T. time.

The Golf Plus fills a niche between the family hatchback and the small MPV. The car-like driving experience is the key differentiator from MPVs. So any hatchback or very soft ‘4x4’ is arguably a comparator.

Chevrolet Captiva would be a contender if it had a better brand. The Nissan QashQai seems to win hearts and minds once people test drive it – but then it is one to two thousand pounds more expensive on the used market than a Golf Plus.

While that is a lot, there is usually a five thousand pound gap to the next level of ‘SUVs’ like the BMW X3 or Ford Kuga. So in truth, this budget won’t buy you any other car-like MPVs or small SUVs that have the same blend of qualities.

A Golf that is easier to load families into and nearly as enjoyable to drive as the conventional car.