Volkswagen Golf 2013 Long-term review - 3

Price: $32,490
Engine: 1.4-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol
Output: 103kW/250Nm
Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch
Fuel / CO2: 5.2L/100km / 121g/km
Safety: Five-star ANCAP/seven airbags

I wonder what ever happened to Chris Heyer?

Those are the kinds of abstract thoughts that drift through your mind when driving a Volkswagen Golf from Melbourne to Bathurst for the annual 1000km touring car – sorry, V8 Supercar – classic.

Well, back in the day when racing driver Chris Heyer was punting a succession of Golfs up, down and around Mount Panorama it was still a touring car race. And the entry list featured everything from V8 Chevrolet Camaros to, well, four-cylinder Golfs.

Heyer was a handy driver if my teenage Hell Corner memories are to be trusted, although he may be best remembered for a pitlane conflagration in 1980 from which he and his GTI escaped relatively unscathed.

Anyway, the point is… well as much as there is one, is that the 1.4-litre turbo-petrol Mark 7 Golf I am cruising in is probably a more potent – as well as significantly more comfortable – car than Heyer’s race mount.

The 103kW/250Nm four-cylinder feels impossibly strong for its size and output, darning efficiently and promptly with the seven-speed DSG. On the Hume it sits languorously and quietly cruising at 115km/h. On the minor roads it quickly drops gears and punts past slower traffic.

It is an outstanding drivetrain and a key attribute of the Golf. By the end of the return trip we have racked up 1783km at the miserly average of just 6.1L/100km. That average was recorded on 98 RON PULP mind you, which is the recommended fuel.

Other downsides? We would like flappy paddle to aid manual shifting and the DSG's launch delivery remains coarse with too much propensity for wheelspin. Reverse can also be a bit clunky. But gee, the progress from the original DSG is sizeable.

All that driving took more than 21 hours to complete and it took in almost every driving scenario imaginable. Highway, byway, suburbia, shopping centre and parking lot – mostly the big grassy one at the bottom of Mount Panorama.

While the Mark 7 rides on a whole new platform dubbed MQB (it means something like 'whole new platform' in German) the Golf feels familiar and remains a very finely honed car. The steering is not too light and not too heavy, just holding enough weight so the car is flickable in town and steady in the bigger corners on the open road.

From my experience the handling was sure, and the ride a tad firmer than the Mark 6. Any blowiness had been evicted, while coarse surface interior noise had been reduced. Allied with sensational front seats and an overall interior of such high quality it’s hard to imagine anything else in the price bracket matching it and the Mark 7 adds up to a very comfortable proposition.

Maybe the most obvious advantage handed out by MQB is interior space. With a wheelbase nearly 90mm longer, the 7 can truly fit adults front and rear. My run to Bathurst was solo but I had bags, a mountain bike and various other bits and bobs thrown in (literally) and the Golf swallowed the lot without fuss.

The rear seats fold down in one motion and cleverly retain plenty of storage space in the rear footwells. It is amazing how much you can fit.

The one real issue I found through all this was a satellite-navigation system glitch. Driving along the Hume the map insisted on jumping onto adjacent minor roads and then trying to navigate me back on to the freeway; u-turns, left turns, right turns. All very annoying, so I just shut it down.

On the way home it seemed to have fixed itself and the problem didn’t reappear.

Overall, the Golf 7 completed my Bathurst 1783 endurance run impressively. It’s such a good car and so well priced it’s hard to see it being toppled from its position as the best small car. Although, on that score, no doubt the new Mazda3 will be keen to see what it can do.

Hmmm, Bathurst 2014, a drive in a Mazda3. Now I recall there was this guy by the name of Moffat who used to race Mazdas up there…

Volkswagen Golf Long-Term Test (Update)

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