READER'S BLOG: Golf ownership a five-act drama

WARNING: ACERBIC SOCIAL COMMENTARY

Defining tragedy is an intriguing process, one that the great philosophers have long toyed with, but never truly certified. Shakespeare, after all, gave the world ten different plays on the subject, each in its own right a little pastiche of despair and lost hope.

But thanks to Volkswagen, I’ve been gifted a new appreciation of one particular Shakespearean work: Othello.

How so? Well, if the last four years of owning my 2012 Volkswagen Golf VI are anything to go by, it seems that quite by accident I’ve lived out the plot of what is possibly one of Shakespeare’s most frustrating tragedies. Really, it’s the kind that gets you right at the end, when you look back on everything that’s dragged you to the depths of confusion and fits of rage, and question oneself: ‘How did I not see this coming?’

And at the same time, there's another dimension of the Othello story that adds a whole new layer of high drama: the killer notion that something is not truly, truly tragic until we understand just how much we loved the thing we lost. You see, what the Golf experience has cemented is that tragedy is not tragedy without some kind of spectacular fall from grace.

So, what am I talking about? Simple. Back in 2012, the Golf VI – penned by the godly Walter d’Silva – seemed to capture the essence of Volkswagen at its absolute peak, possessing that most indefinable, Deutsch virtue: classlessness. Subtly innovative engineering, melded effortlessly to a quietly assertive aesthetic lexicon. Brilliant. I can’t deny I wasn’t seriously drawn to every aspect of it. Even the most authoritative automotive minds were with me on it, too.

And in particular, it was the Volkswagen’s DSG gearbox that epitomised what was so right about this car. Armed with twin clutch packs and seven speeds, DSG was a product of a remarkable engineering vision to out-establish the automatic establishment. To take the simple act of changing gears, and make it into engineering spectacle. My first drive had me in awe as the tachometer needle ripped around the dial with an unnerving alacrity, spinning effortlessly to 6250rpm before flitting – as though weightless – into the next gear. And the next. DSG did for me what Pablo Picasso said all art should do: It washed the dust of the mundane off our souls. It made the automatic gearbox exciting. And it made the Golf truly something special.

So I had to have one. And I did. Like George Bernard Shaw once noted, first love was only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity. Das Golf was indeed lovely. Well, for a while, anyway.

Now, four years later, I hate it. Every fibre of my being is angry with this car, seething with a rage that only comes when you realise you’ve been played. I now find myself on the cold hill side, wondering: ‘What the hell happened?’

It’s simple, really. The DSG gearbox was the beauty spot that became a blight so potent it destroyed any lingering penchant I had for the car. Yes, I knew when I purchased the Golf of the DSG recalls overseas. But, staring at it in the showroom, there was a blind faith that the men and women of Wolfsburg had after all got it right. How could they fail? They’re German!

So when I look back with the power of hindsight, there’s a sad, dramatic irony in the fact that I was surprised when the dual clutches first started shuddering ominously at 16,000km, and then required complete replacement at 16,000km. I was a little less incredulous, then, when 10 days later I was told the clutches had failed again and had to be replaced. Again.

When they failed a third time at 30,000km, my confidence was well at its nadir. So when the entire mechatronics system required complete replacement at 32,000km, the treachery had begun to seem routine. Add to that a failed ABS wiring loom twice over and the most recent DSG cock-up (a Tiptronic sports mode gone AWOL – brilliant!) and you have a pathetic pastiche of sorely dashed expectations.

Oh, and the dealers... Whatever you’ve heard about poor Volkswagen service, don’t believe it. It's so much worse than that. Not just one, mind, but two separate dealers who have been each as clueless, disinterested and indifferent as the other. Jean-Paul Sartre would’ve done a better job at customer service. At least he’d have appreciated the absurdity of it all.

The whole things hurts, really, because annoyingly this feels like a quagmire I’ve pulled myself into. Like Othello himself, my well-founded intrigue for something I clearly had a fascination in exposed me to the vulnerability of my own fatal flaw. Blindness. Blind, faithful curiosity that turned out to be very foolish and ultimately tragic.

Now, the Golf must go. I don’t trust it. Nothing makes me angrier than the betrayal of trust by presenting false integrity. And now, thanks to the Volkswagen emissions debacle of November 2015, I really don’t trust the company. ‘Dieselgate' has only legitimised my deep consternation about VW: that actually, all of this engineering ‘genius,’ the stuff that sucked us all in, really doesn’t exist.

Maybe this is a company with a rotten core, whose desperate, hubristic drive to be World No. 1 led it to create an illusion it could do things it actually really couldn’t. The emissions scandal may have been the smoking gun, but the well publicised, yet now-sort-of-forgotten DSG farce runs even deeper. It has the potential to plague the company for years, to haunt that thing Volkswagen needs more than anything right now, its reputation. And, worst of all, it says this is a company that not only lies to its customers, but has lied to itself about just how capable it really is. Maybe, after all, that sparkling engineering heart of the giant that lured us all, was, sadly, just imagined.

The Golf must go, now, because what it is, is tragic. It stands for something fatally flawed: a company that cannot, seemingly, save itself from itself.