Volkswagen Golf at 50: the hatchback that changed the world

I owned a Golf once. Hasn’t everyone? Mine was a comical experience, because I bought it for a feature in this very publication.

Back in 2012 I handed over £300 to a bloke who could only just be bothered to leave his house in order to sell his car, for a very basic, high-mileage Mk3 Golf, complete with a few months’ MOT and tax and in surprisingly solid mechanical order.

I bought it solely so I could run it against two similarly cheap impulse-buy bangers, over 100 laps of a track and then scrap it on the same day.

The idea was to find out how cheaply you could do a track day if you were willing to do it in, well, just about anything.

Frustratingly, my colleague’s Saab proved to be not only faster on track but also worth more in scrap at the end of the day, so I didn’t win.

And that was my brief albeit extreme experience of Golf ownership, courtesy of Autocar and a mildly ropey version of what is widely hailed as the worst generation of the Volkswagen Golf.

Yet even that had actually worn the miles well: it had doors that thunked with satisfying sturdiness, and over our day together it stoically withstood levels of abuse to which a normal family hatchback would never normally be subjected.

Today I find myself at rather a different end of the Golf spectrum. The black, polished, boxy delight of this Mk1 Volkswagen Golf GL 1.5 gleams in the flat light of a British autumn day.

The moment I left my driveway, headed for Salisbury and out onto the plains, I received a thumbs-up from a passing van driver, smiles from pedestrians and a whole world of goodwill for this raspy little hatchback.

We do often talk about modern cars being overpowered and the joys of lower power outputs and less traction. I know.

But this 1983, carb-fed 1.5-litre, 75bhp Golf, on its 155/80, 13in Michelin Energy rubber, is one of the best examples of the ‘low-power, low-weight, low-traction’ mantra.

After all, it’s not just about your Caterhams and your GR86s; the everyday, front-wheel driver can deliver a masterclass in friendly, uncomplicated fun when the power-to-weight ratio and tyre contact patch all tallies up just so.

Obviously this particular Golf was never a car designed to thrill. It’s a GL, which was a high-spec trim but equipped with standard suspension and the four-speed manual gearbox rather than the GTI’s five-speed.

I remind myself of that as I once again reach to push the gearstick through a non-existent part of its fairly rubbery and vague gate to a fifth gear that isn’t there.

My mechanical-sympathy radar, and my ears, keep telling me the engine is being punished enough at 60mph in fourth – despite this example of Golf actually being longer-geared than earlier models, as part of Volkswagen’s strategy to improve efficiency.

Still, I romp past the 5000rpm power peak a few times and on towards the redline before backing off, taking into consideration the age and impressive condition of this VW heritage car.

Even at a modest canter, pointing its dainty nose across Wiltshire’s open roads feels like an instant detox from today’s world of touchscreens and assistance systems.

From the simple steering wheel, with its badged outline of the Wolfsburg factory, to the uncluttered dials that reassure you of an appropriate amount of revs and a comfortable engine temperature, it’s a mechanical balm to the mind that’s weary of the ever-constant connectivity of modern life.

Let’s not forget that in its time this late Mk1 Golf was a high-spec car that had benefited from nine years of various engine upgrades and tweaks, including a fairly major facelift.

People bought the Golf largely because it had a reputation for quality and engineering prowess, which it absolutely did by the standards of rivals such as the Ford Escort and Vauxhall Astra.

That reputation paid off. By the time this car was produced in 1983, nearly a decade after the first VW Golf rolled off the production line in April 1974, VW had sold six million Golfs around the world. It was already a legend.

To go back to the beginning, the Golf was conceived and designed as a successor to the VW Beetle. Porsche came up with the first prototype: the VW EA266 had the required hatchback boot and interior space, but the mid-mounted, water-cooled engine that sat beneath the rear seats was awkward to reach and work on.

A second concept, the EA276, was developed at Wolfsburg and showcased many of the Golf’s final engineering features, including a nose-mounted engine that powered the front wheels, a torsion beam at the back and a fuel tank under the rear seats.

But it used the Beetle’s air-cooled engine, which didn’t quite meet the necessary criteria of, well, working reliably.

It was Audi’s Rudolf Leiding who crafted the concept that really formed the foundation for the Golf, with the VW EA377. This boxy, practical, front-wheel-drive car was powered by a water-cooled four-cylinder engine (as were the Audi 80 and 100 that Leiding had already masterminded).

It was also already under the careful design control of Giorgetto Giugiaro, who oversaw the Mk1 Golf’s creation, albeit not without some inevitable push-and-pull between the finance and design departments.

“Originally, I had planned the rectangular headlights to be a mirror image of the tail-light clusters,” Giugiaro has said. “But that cost too much, so I had to take the round headlights.

Creating a beautiful vehicle is easy if you only make a few of them. But if you want to build thousands, you have to design the car in such a way that it’s easy to assemble. I must always be more than just a stylist.”

And so the Golf’s famous round headlights were born of financial restrictions rather than style choices. The rest, as they say, is history.

Throughout its life the Golf has stuck to its familiar recipe – a familiarity that is one of its lasting strengths.

While it had legions of fans among enthusiasts, it also secured brand-loyal motorists who bought generation after generation of Golf because they trusted it as a car that would get the job done: practical, efficient, properly built and reassuringly expensive without straying into the rarefied realms of being unattainable by the everyday motorist. We’re back at the door thunk, aren’t we?

The Golf evolved quickly. The Mk2 brought better refinement and efficiency and introduced all-wheel drive, ABS and power steering over the course of its eight-year run.

The Mk3 arrived in 1991 and majored on safety tech including airbags, and it was the first car in the class to introduce a V6 engine, with the Golf VR6. A forerunner to the modern-day hyper-hatches? I would say so.

The generations ticked by, and here we are in 2024, 50 years and eight generations of Golf later – and with the successor to the Golf already here, in the streamlined, minimalist and somewhat guinea pig-like form of the electric ID 3.

I like a guinea pig, so no complaints here, and I actually think the ID 3 is a rather handsome successor to the Golf. But as I swing our lovely Mk1 through some faster bends on the way back towards Salisbury’s medieval streets, I can’t help revelling in the sheer mechanical directness of it.

Something that’s missing from any electric car – and, I’d argue, from any mainstream modern piston-engined car, even if to a lesser extent.

The steering isn’t power-assisted, of course, and after your friend and mine, Matt Prior, arrived to have a brief go and immediately described the steering as having a ‘mostly advisory’ capacity, I couldn’t help stealing his words.

Because he’s right: this is no precision tool. The steering is hefty and has plenty of play, but I suspect by the standards of the 1970s and ’80s it probably felt pretty sharp(ish).

I realise I’m viewing this through a heavily rose-tinted filter, but the Mk1 Golf feels confident and adept despite slightly fuzzy steering response, a rubbery gearshift and tinnitus-spec engine noise.

I mean, old cars are noisy and wobbly by comparison with modern cars; there’s no getting away from that. But even now you can see and feel the magic in the Golf.

There’s tangible evidence, in the way it both hustles through corners and cheerfully spins up past 5000rpm and on to the distant redline, that you would have felt ever so smug in your German-engineered family hatch. And rightly so, because it is rather delightful.

Even winding towards Salisbury Cathedral’s spire on a classic, British sun-to-monsoon sort of day, the Golf bumps tidily over cobbles and drain covers, the engine muttering away gently and the steering hefty but not unmanageable.

The Golf feels as easy-going and comfortable in these awkward, ancient streets as it did on the wide, fast roads across Wiltshire’s plains.

Even in its original form, the Golf’s real strength has been its multi-purpose, ‘everything to all people’ abilities. It has always done the job, regardless of what that job was.

And can I talk about visibility? Good grief, if you want a reminder of the price we’ve paid for better crash structures in modern cars, sit in a Mk1 Golf and revel in the light and the view out.

The spindly pillars barely seem structural enough to hold the glasshouse together, which does keep the mind focused when considering ‘if I get this wrong’ corners, but it also makes your view of the world and everyone else in it so much clearer. It reminds me of why, once upon a time, we didn’t need parking sensors.

So there you have it: the Volkswagen Golf at 50 years old. We didn’t give in to the temptation of sampling a classic GTI, because this felt like it should be a celebration of the everyday car. 

The fact that it’s sold more than 37 million examples in 70 countries is a testament to its enduring popularity.

We use the phrase ‘classless’ perhaps a bit too much, but here it really does apply. VW’s family favourite is classless in the best possible way, and that has always been something it does better than any of the cars against which it has competed. In the words of VW boss Thomas Schäfer: “In a Golf, everyone is well dressed.”

Whatever you were wearing, you’ve probably been in a Golf, or even owned a Golf or two or three. You probably have a Golf anecdote, as well. I hope you do, because mine have all been memorable, to say the least.

So here’s to you: the Golf owners and admirers, the fan club guys and girls, the festival-goers, the track-day racers, the modifiers, the restorers, the car-booters, the school-run warriors, the commuters and the collectors.

Here’s to the ones who’ve made memories in Golfs, from the mundane to the remarkable. And here’s to the car that helped to make those memories. The classless, iconic, ultimate all-rounder, and still going strong after 50 years.

It probably wouldn’t be overstating it to say the Golf has embodied societal change over the years, as well as technical progress, but it would be a bit more straightforward to just say it’s a bloody great car.

Always has been and always will be. We wish it a very happy birthday.