Volkswagen Golf hits the skids

The car that largely invented, defined and keeps redefining the hatchback body style looks like it’s finally in big trouble.

European sales of Volkswagen’s Golf fell 28 per cent in April, with Volkswagen insiders pointing to sales cannibalisation from its own new Tiguan SUV, which is on track to overtake it in global sales later this year.

The Golf, in hatch and wagon forms, suffered double-digit sales drops in its five biggest European markets -- Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Spain.

Though still one of the world’s best selling cars, the Golf is losing ground despite the recent changeover to the upgraded Mark 7.5 version, which arrives in Australia in July.

Volkswagen sold 209,764 Golfs around the world to the end of April, according to JATO Dynamics, which was 7.6 per cent fewer than in the first quarter of 2016.

By contrast, the Tiguan could pass the Golf’s volumes by the third quarter of the year. It screamed up the sales charts, growing by 47.9 per cent over the first quarter of 2016 to post 172,623 sales.

Besides being attacked by the Tiguan (with which it shares its MQB underbody architecture), the Golf is also being cannibalised by another MQB car, the Skoda Octavia, the world’s 29th best selling car.

Volkswagen’s most iconic model could face further downward sales pressure from the facelifted Polo (due here by the end of this year), as well as larger (Allspace) and smaller (Coupe) versions of the Tiguan, and two all-new small SUVs from Volkswagen, based on the T-ROC and T-Cross concepts.