Five ways the Volkswagen Golf 8 changes the hatchback world

The Volkswagen Golf has always been considered the technology trendsetter of the hatchback world, even when that title hasn’t translated into reality.

But that myth is more reality than ever with the arrival of the 2020 Volkswagen Golf Mk 8. Don’t believe us? Here are five reasons why:

For better or for worse, this is a clear trend in the car industry and, naturally, mistakes will be made along the way.

Volkswagen has already made them, notably with the Touareg’s version of the Innovision multimedia system that has no haptic feedback, yet asks you to click through up to five layers to get to the stuff you want.

That’s been cleaned up with the 2020 Volkswagen Golf 8, to the point where they don’t want you doing more than three clicks -- and the tiles and their subsets are more logical.

The redundant (and less talked about) technology that gives them the confidence to do all of this is a much-improved voice control system. That way, the Golf Mk8 can appeal to younger buyers via the touchscreens they’re so familiar with in everyday life, while rusted-on Golfisti can just tell it what to do instead.

The upside for Volkswagen is greater manufacturing precision and reduced ultimate cost (which doesn’t sound right, but is), because the 60-odd buttons you could have in a Golf Mk6 add up, and had to be aligned just tickety-boo.

Now they just need to line up the buttons on the steering wheel and the rest is a one-piece infotainment system.

The mild hybrid tech works so well on the 2020 Volkswagen Golf 8’s 1.5-litre petrol engine that you wouldn’t even know it was there. In fact, some of the less observant journalists at the launch actually didn’t know it was there and had to be reminded.

This is the tech that does its job so well, it’s killing off the microcar sector.

Microcars, like Fiat’s Panda and 500 and Hyundai’s i10, are big in Europe, less so in Australia, invisible in America, and they all exist to lower the average emissions of their respective companies. But the tech you need to meet next year’s tougher European emissions is a bit expensive for a class of car that sometimes makes profits in the tens of euros per unit, rather than the thousands.

“We think there will be a time not so far away that people will go for petrol or a combination with mild hybrid and not diesel,” Volkswagen’s development boss, Frank Welsch, said at the Golf Mk7.5’s launch.

“A mild hybrid is cheaper than diesel and is more or less the same CO2.”

And all these Golf and Polo-sized cars with mild-hybrids (which pull the new 2020 Golf 8’s WLTP consumption down to a diesel-esque 4.9 litres/100km) will pull the averages down while making a profit.

It’s also brilliantly smooth, reliable technology and has been only seen in luxury and premium cars before the Volkswagen Golf Mk8. Now everybody else will have to cover it off.

There was talk early on that Volkswagen Group’s Modular Transverse Matrix (MQB) architecture, designed by Ulrich Hackenberg’s team, was too expensive. But those calculations reckoned without Volkswagen running it for (at least) two full model generations.

MQB is back in Golf 8, same wheelbase, though the car is 25mm longer (approx) and a touch wider, so more or less the same interior space and cargo area.

It’s updated, for sure, but the core of the MQB architecture was thought of as being good enough for a second full Golf generation.

Not only that, though, but (and forgive us if we forget one) the Volkswagen Polo, Touran, Atlas, Tiguan, Tiguan Allspace, Golf Sportsvan, T-Roc and T-Cross (and a bunch of China-only models), then basically the entire range of Seats and Skodas, plus Audi’s A1, A3, TT, Q1 and Q3.

With subsequent cycle rollouts, like the next Arteon or the next Tiguan generation, it will take the MQB’s full life cycle out to around 20 years. Multiply that by its eight million cars a year and the platform has done its fair share of Volkswagen lifting.

Everything you could reasonably expect to feel, touch and see in the 2020 Volkswagen Golf 8 has gone up a level. Other pieces have gone down.

At the Golf Mk7.5 facelift, Volkswagen development boss Frank Welsch gave a strong hint about what we’ve just seen in the Golf Mk8.

“For years we optimised cars to premium quality for European eyes. If you look through eyes like Chinese or Brazilian eyes we spend a lot of money on things the customers will not see or feel or pay for,” he said back then.

“For China, things need to have good durability and good quality but visually not that good as Europe. They do not care about that. Our engineers traditionally do but those customers do not.”

Therefore, the underside of the Golf Mk8 bonnet remains with its undercoat paint only. Even if lowering that bar is a shock for people accustomed to seeing new Golfs only raise it in terms of quality.

Another shock is the removal of the gas struts for the bonnet, replaced by a flimsy manual strut (the Mercedes-Benz A-Class does the same thing). Volkswagen claims this is because the Golf has gone from one bonnet latch to two, but it’s hard to understand what that has to do with the price of gas struts.

Australian Volkswagen Golf Mk8 customers won’t get a chance to drive the 1.5-litre petrol engine that is, well, a technical marvel.

That’s a shame and, alas, dilutes a lot of the Golf Mk8’s class-leading technical status.

That position is easy to argue when there was a 48-Volt mild-hybrid system attached to a 1.5-litre Miller Cycle turbo motor, with 350 bar of common-rail, fuel-injection pressure, an atmospheric plasma spray onto the cylinder walls, cylinder deactivation and a 12.5:1 compression ratio.

That position is much harder to sell, however, when the local 2020 Volkswagen Golf 8 carries over the 1.4-litre motor for 110kW and 240Nm.

But it’s telling that Volkswagen thought so much of the Australian powertrain option that they didn’t even take one to the launch in Portugal...

Says it all, really.

Alas, the issue does not lie with Volkswagen Australia. Until our fuel and emissions standards are aligned with Europe, increasingly new technology will be sidelined for Oz.

Read the 2020 Volkswagen Golf Review