Volkswagen Golf Sportsvan 2014 Review

In the Australian market's list of two-row mini people-mover failures reside Mazda's Premacy, Renault's Scenic, the Daewoo Tacuma and Hyundai LaVita. In the undecided column sits the Mercedes-Benz B-Class. In the win column sits, ummm.

The issue is that while this style of machine offers more interior practicality than any of the small-to-mid-size SUVs that steal its potential customers, buyers have time and again preferred a high-riding faux forest ferry to something that's built off a car's architecture and handles properly.

So it's with trepidation tinged with reluctance that Volkswagen Australia even looks sideways at the Golf Sportsvan, and more's the pity. It's a terrific car.

The easiest way to consider it is as a bigger, more practical, more family-oriented Golf. There are plenty of reasons why you should consider it like this, not least being that it sits on the same Transverse Modular Matrix (MQB) chassis architecture as the Golf, but stretched long ways and width ways to deliver more everything for families.

And it runs much the same powertrain options, offering fuel economy figures in the Golf ballpark. In Europe, that means it starts with a pair of 1.2-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol engines and rises to 92kW and 110kW versions of the 1.4-litre turbo four. And then there's an 81kW 1.6-litre turbo-diesel and a 110kW 2.0-litre turbo-diesel.

On the back of that, the front-wheel drive Golf Sportsvan has either a six-speed manual gearbox or a seven-speed dual-clutch automated transmission.

The best of them (the 1.6-litre TDI) delivers 3.6L/100km, which equates to 101g/km of CO2 - not bad for 1436kg. The lightest of the petrol cars, the 1.2-litre four, is 1324kg (and even that includes a 75kg allowance for a driver), while the 1.4-litre 110kW version is 1383kg.

It's a car that directly replaces the Golf Plus, which was a (largely European) family favourite that was remarkable only in delivering levels of stodginess rarely seen outside Downton Abby. Still, half a million Germans bought it, which tells you something.

The Golf Sportsvan has some very handy basic parameters to its layout. The first is that the front seats are up nice and high, ostensibly to ape the softer SUVs and eliminate one of the reasons not to buy a 'proper' car. The hip point of the driver is about 59mm higher than it is in the Golf 7, plus the doors open wider than they do in the hatch.

Then there's the rest of the front-seat packaging. Each door pocket will swallow a 1.5-litre bottle, plus there are two other cup-holders in the console, a lidded hole atop the centre of the dash (where the high-end audio system puts a speaker) and a tray that slides beneath the seats to sneak other stuff away from prying eyes.

It gets funkier in the back, where the 40:20:40-split folding rear seat has a 180mm range of fore-and-aft movement. You won't care that the hip point in the rear creates 33mm more rear legroom than in the Golf Plus, but you will care that two 1.9-metre adults that can comfortably sit behind each other.

It doesn't stop there. Each side of the 60/40 split in the seat can slide forwards or backwards independent of the other side, plus the '20' in the 40:20:40 three-seat bench is a cargo hole. The seats drop down and fold up easily, too, delivering 500 litres of luggage space in the standard rear-seat position, 590 litres when the seat is forward of 1520 litres when it's folded flat.

All that and it doesn't need any more room to park than a Golf, primarily because it's only 4338mm long (83mm more than the Golf) and secondly because it has a parking package that does the job for you, whether you're parallel parking or going in straight.

And, what's more, it takes care of you on the way out again, debuting Volkswagen's Blind Spot Monitor and Rear Traffic Alert system that detects crossing traffic up to 40 metres away and, if necessary, brakes the car to avoid a collision.

It's part of an electronic security package that's a lot more comprehensive than you'll find on a Maserati Quattroporte costing four times as much, including a low-speed emergency braking system that debuted on the facelifted Polo, plus radar cruise control, a lane-keeping assistant and lights than automatically dim to avoid blinding oncoming traffic.

It all smacks of a package that's well thought through and well executed, and that's exactly how it drives.

Besides all of its other trickery, it also has a driver profile selector, so its adjustable dampers, its engine response, its transmission urgency and even its steering can work together to deliver the squishiness of Comfort mode, a Normal mode (that everybody will use 95 per cent of the time), a Sport mode and an Individual mode that can combine them in funky combinations.

As you'd expect from this style of car, it's not a dynamite piece of apex-munching fluidity, but it's surprisingly good, and about 100 per cent better than it probably needs to be.

The 1.4-litre 110kW petrol engine engine is quiet and strong, delivering enough torque (250Nm) to make it flexible in every gear and it's smooth enough to be completely fuss free, which probably sums up the car right there.

The DSG can be caught out if you're punching the throttle before the start-stop has properly re-awoken the engine, but it apologises by making the next shifts smooth and clean.

The changes in modes work beautifully, too. Keep it in Normal and you'll find suspension that soaks bumps up like a limousine, though it's a bit floaty in Comfort. Sport mode is sharper without being demonstrably uncomfortable. It's just a touch more direct, while still soaking up big hits and small nibbles with equal aplomb.

We had an accidental 1.9-metre passenger in the rear seat and he was so comfortable that he fell asleep. With me driving.

It steers and brakes cleanly and effortlessly and it successfully walks the fine line between being comfortable and dull.

While the Sportsvan is a hard car to get excited about, it's impossible not to be impressed with it.

Volkswagen should bring this car to Australia. And a big chunk of SUV buyers should move across to it. But neither of those things is likely to happen. Which is sad.