Progress report: 1982 VW Golf Mk1 vs 2020 VW Golf Mk8

I failed to spot the zig-zagging stitching in the new 2020 Volkswagen Golf’s seats actually spells out the letters ‘V W’. That’s the sort of detail you laser onto when you are a true enthusiast. An expert. The very best kind of Car Nerd. 

Photography: Mark Riccioni

You’d like Alex, who pointed out the new Golf’s upholstery Easter egg. Alex has owned this inky black 1982 VW Golf Mk1 for 14 years. His dad bought it for £140 and sportingly let Alex daily-drive it at university. There used to be a small dent in one of the front wings from when some horrid Kentish youths elected to lob a brick off a bridge as it was passing underneath. For a while it stayed as part of the car’s history, but the rest of it’s too immaculate to not have that scar repaired. However, this is no garage queen.

Two years ago, to celebrate the Golf’s 40th birthday, Alex decided he’d drive the car home. Not to his house – to the car’s. 

So, amidst the sub-zero horrors of the ‘Beast from the East’ storm, he drove it from the middle of England to Wolfsburg in Germany, took a few photographs, and drove it all the way back again. When he returned, the head gasket went pop. So, he replaced it, and kept on using the car. Told you he was one of us. 

While Alex trains his critical eye on the very latest VW, I’m off to fawn over his OG. You’re thinking ‘hang on, the first Golf was a child of the Seventies’, aren’t you? Quite right. Giugiaro’s achingly perfect straight-lined design first went on UK sale back in October 1974, and it was a smash hit. 

So much so, by the start of the power-crazed, loadsamoney Eighties, VW noticed there was a trend for London yuppies and well-to-do suburban sorts to buy its cheap little hatchback speced up with all the trimmings. And it reacted, with the Golf GLS, which became this: the GL model.

It stands for ‘Golf Luxury’. Actually I’ve just made that up, but it perfectly describes what this car is: the top-of-the-range version of the first Golf, excluding the go-faster GTI. 

This version was all about the garnish, not speed. The little touches that said “Excuse me, you there in your Ford Escort. I’m considerably better than you – just look at my headlamp washers.”

Not even the brand-new Mk8 Golf has headlight washer jets. You could argue it doesn’t need them. This is the GL’s modern ancestor: the 2020 Golf Style. It’s a £27,000 range-topper complete with a 48-volt hybrid-assisted 1.5-litre turbocharged engine driving a seven-speed, twin-clutch gearbox. There’s adaptive cruise control and lane-following steering. It can download updates over the internet. There’s a choice of 30 colours for the ambient lighting, and LED light clusters on every corner. 

So no, the new Golf doesn’t need tear ducts for its headlights. It can see around bends and cleverly dip main beam when another car comes along. It’s a tech fest. Three decades ago, when smartphone connectivity and voice control were closer to sci-fi than realty, VW seduced Golf buyers with rather more humble niceties. 

Exclusive to ye olde Golf GL back in the day were such frivolities as plastic-trimmed door tops instead of bare painted metal. The front grille wore a thin chrome border – as did the window-winder handles. And the greatest mic-drop in all of car interior design: a rev-counter. 

In conclusion, these two cars share a badge and a lineage, but they’re as different in every other particular as a Model T Ford and the Space Shuttle. End of story. 

Except, not quite. There are strands of Mk1 Golf DNA woven into its very-great granddaughter. Alex points out the shared quarterlight window behind the A-pillar, designed to improve visibility at junctions. He notes the Mk8 – to the frothing rage of Golf aficionados – has ditched the Mk7’s gas strut-equipped bonnet, and gone back to a simple unclippable pole – like the original. As ever, there’s a pleasingly angular rear pillar, and a chrome-lipped nose. 

Even inside, there seems to be a lineage between these cars, strange as it may seem. Look at the cockpit of the first Golf: it’s a wonderful piece of simple ergonomics. The radio and heater controls have been hoisted above the vents to the same height as the instrument dials, so everything you might reach out and fiddle with is safely in your eyeline. 

Now compare that to today’s Golf. I’m no fan of the latest model’s idiotic touch-sensitive heater and volume controls, nor the cheapo black ‘piano’ plastic in which the twin 10-inch screens are housed. They're a rare slice of Volkwagen selling its sensible soul in the name of style, and making a right old cock-up. But in terms of raw architecture, Golfs 1 and 8 have something in common. Tech up top, ventilation and storage downstairs.

Wondering what’s going on in the middle of the classic car’s steering wheel? Why, that’s a wolf guarding a castle, my learned friend informs me. It’s the symbol of the Golf’s home town, Wolfsburg. Volkswagen ultra-geeks will be saving that picture to keep in their special secret folder for later. Phwoar.

Meanwhile, the Golf 8 is the first Volkswagen to wear the brand’s newly redesigned logo on its chunky steering wheel, beating the all-electric ID3 to showrooms. Is this the Golf’s last stand, before electrification sweeps it away in favour of a new hatchback icon? Perhaps...

Now, I’m not going to waste your time exhaustively comparing how a modern car with the crash safety of an airliner’s black box drives versus a machine conceived before the Apple Computer Company had been founded or Concorde first flew.

‘Blah blah lightness, blah blah visibility, blah blah they don’t make ‘em like they used to but I wouldn’t fancy having an argument with an oak tree’. You’ve heard it all before. I’ve written it all before, actually. 

Here’s a different question for these two top-of-the-range Golfs: do they make you wish you were driving a GTI instead?

In the Mk8, I kinda do. It doesn’t lack performance: with 150bhp on the end of my toe it’s twice as powerful as Alex’s car, and even though it weighs half a tonne more, it’s easily faster. Quicker than a Mk1 GTI, in fact. And a Mk2. It’s also 10mpg kinder on fuel, and it’s so peaceful on board, I’d risk falling asleep if it weren’t for the fact the heater was stuck on ‘Arctic blast’ and it’s too fiddly to risk a reset. Brrrr.

But it ain’t memorable. It’s been engineered down to the nanometre to be a sure-footed, easy-going, wholly trustworthy and unsurprising car to drive. There’s a decent amount of front-end grip, and the controls all offer a consistent weight and oily slickness. But it’s never a car you’d goad. This mild hybrid-battery equipped model feels a bit lumpen, and if you try to play some, ahem, crazy-Golf, it’s a bit of a pudding. 

In the Golf GL, however… I don’t think you’d miss the fact you weren’t sitting behind a red lipstick’d grille, and only had 70bhp on tap, instead of the GTI’s heady 108bhp. There’s so much else to enjoy, and so much that’s shared. The four-speed gearbox is positive and satisfying. You don’t hurry through the gears to keep the revs low and save fuel – you savour them and let the carburettor-fed, 1457cc 4-cylinder engine sing for its supper. 

I know I’m in grave danger of going a bit ‘blah blah only weighs 800kg blah blah little grip means big fun’ – sorry. But the GL is a bit of an adventure to drive. For all its simplicity, quality and top-of-the-line equipment, it has a certain something the Mk8 – and all the Golf’s rivals – obviously lack. A little flicker of soul. You don’t have to be an enthusiastic, expert car nerd to spot that, but it helps.