Road Test: Volkswagen Golf 1.4 TSI ACT Highline

Price as tested: €33,642

+ Solidity, comfort, technology, refinement, styling, desirable
– Not as economical as a diesel, not sporty to drive
= Golf cements its position as the best family hatch around

Success, of course, breeds success but it can, without care and attention, also breed complacency. Look at George Lucas. Back in the seventies and eighties he created the original Star Wars movies, which delighted and entertained a whole generation of sci-fi fans. Come 1999, and the return of Star Wars to the big screen with The Phantom Menace, those same fans were frothing with excitement at the arrival of what we all confidently expected to be the cinematic event of the decade. Aaaaannnnd... we were sorely disappointed. Lucas seemed to have spent so much time carefully honing the digital effects (which were, in fairness, brilliant) that he forgot that a great film needs a great script. And characters. And a plot.

So it is we come to the seventh generation of Volkswagen Golf, a car that has transcended the boundaries of its class to become classless. You could just as easily and naturally be seen pulling up in your Golf at Aldi as at the Ritz. It is the epitome of affordable Germanic engineering, a family hatchback with the breeding of a teutonic thoroughbred.

For this Mark VII version, VW has really pushed the boat out in engineering terms. There's an entirely new chassis under there, called MQB in VW-speak, and it will go on to form the basis of almost every car in the whole Volkswagen empire in the future. It's light, sophisticated and makes the Golf fractionally more spacious than before. That really shows up inside, where behind the exceptionally comfortable front seats there's plenty of room for kids in bulky safety seats and lanky teenagers.

From the front seats, the cabin is instantly (and hardly surprisingly) Golf-ish, with beautifully clear instruments, a logical control layout and on our highly-specced press demo car, one of the best sat-nav systems we've ever seen. Not only did it have clear, precise mapping but the screen actually detects when your finger is hovering near it and makes the buttons bigger.

That's not the only example of VW putting some seriously careful thought into lightening the drivers' load. There was also Lane Keeping Assist that actually nudges the car back into lane if you start to drift across, active cruise control that brakes (a little too jumpily sometimes) if a car slows in front of you, active cornering lights, LED daytime lights, automatic parking brake, Bluetooth... The list really does go on, but then at the €33,642 for our test car, it should do. Panic not, for the standard version of the Highline model with 1.4 TSI ACT starts at a more reasonable €26,745 and is still very well equipped.

What's ACT I hear you ask? Active Cylinder Technology, a new gizmo that VW hopes will allow drivers of its petrol turbo cars to achieve diesel-like fuel economy. It works by shutting down two of the engine's four cylinders when cruising on a light throttle, seamlessly firing up all four again when you need more power. It's just about undetectable save for a small logo that pops up in the multi-function display in the dashboard, and the faintest sense that a slight harmonic vibration is coming and going, off in the distance. Very clever stuff. Does it actually work? Well, almost. We managed to average 6.5-litres per 100km fuel consumption over a week with the car (that's 43mpg) which isn't at all bad, but we would have easily cracked into the high fifties, even low sixties in mpg terms with an equivalent diesel Golf. And considering that there's only €200 extra to pay for the equivalent diesel model...

Still, this Golf, as with any Golf, is just brilliant to drive. It feels a touch less sporty and agile than the last-generation model, but the comfort and refinement levels have seriously been amped-up. We honestly think that you'd have to trade up to the likes of a BMW 5 Series to find a car that's as quiet and relaxing on a long journey as this one. The only dynamic complaint comes from the fact that the suspension can occasionally get caught out by the typically bumpy, lumpen tarmac that we endure in this neck of the woods. When that happens, the Golf thumps and shudders in a most unseemly fashion, but the rest of the time all is serene. Perhaps the 17” alloy wheels were at least partly to blame.

So, the new Golf is as Golf-y as it's always been, but more so. The quality levels are higher than pretty much anything else in the class, refinement is off-the-scale good and if it doesn't feel quite as agile and enjoyable to drive as before, then its improved comfort and cabin space present a worthwhile trade-off. Shall we stick with the golfing metaphor and conclude that it's a classy hole-in-one?

Facts & Figures
Volkswagen Golf 1.4 TSI ACT Highline
Price as tested: €33,642
Range price: €19,995 to €31,645
Capacity: 1,395cc
Power: 140bhp
Torque: 250Nm
Top speed: 212kmh
0-100kmh: 8.4sec
Economy: 5.0l-100km (56.5mpg)
CO2 emissions: 112g/km
VRT Band: A4. €200 road tax
Euro NCAP rating: 5-star; 94% adult, 89% child, 65% pedestrian, 71% safety assist