The Volkswagen Golf is, undeniably, a legend. In its 50 years with us it's racked up 37 millions of sales, across hundreds of models – and that means there's a Golf for everyone.
Here we round up some of the best (and indeed strangest) we've ever seen, from the game-changing original right the way through to today's 100mpg hybrid.
Read on for our guide to the Golf.
Mk1 Golf
Price: from £5000-£25,000
The genesis of the Golf breed married handsome Giugiaro styling with a modern front-engined, front-wheel-drive platform.
It was “quicker, roomier, more stable and more economical” than a Beetle, according to our January 1975 road test, although the driving position, brake feel and ride of this nascent incarnation of family hatchback were brought into question.
Not that those criticisms hampered its success: Volkswagen had made one million after just two and a half years.
Mk4 Golf TDi
Price: from £750 to £17,000
Build and material quality took a leap into the stratosphere with the fourth generation of the Golf: it had an interior to rival the likes of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, and indeed the closely related Audi A3, but it was available for substantially less money than either.
The GTI version was actually a bit of a duffer this time around – it was much too refined for its own good – but the cooking versions were tremendous, and especially so when fitted with the PD (for ‘pumpe düse’) turbo diesel engines that were introduced in 1999.
The most powerful of those brought bona fide hot hatch performance with hypermiler-friendly fuel economy.
Mk2 Golf Country
Price: from £10,000-£20,000
The second-generation Golf arrived in 1983, bringing with it a larger, rounder body and a multitude of novel special editions, such as the supercharged G60 Limited with 210bhp at its disposal.
The most prescient of all was the Country, with a Steyr-Puch four-wheel drive system and a whopping 120mm lift in ride height, giving ground clearance of 180mm.
Bullbars, skidplates and snazzy mountain-range stickers completed the package. Were there an ancestor to today’s T-Roc, this would be it.
Mk3 Variant
Join the debate
Add your comment
Cast your minds back to 1997/1998 when the Mk4 Golf was launched. IIRC there was no plan for a GTi version (especially with the V5 and VR6 versions) and VW (especially in the UK) marketing simply applied GTI badges to the most powerful 4-cylinder variant. We owned a Mk4 1.6 auto which was a superb car (still going apparently), superbly put together, now on a Mk7 which is equally as good.