#Volkwagen gl golf driver#
#Volkwagen gl golf series#

Still, the torque curve is relatively flat for a pressurized engine. The only objection I have to pairing the turbo with the automatic is that if you’re shifting for yourself, you can better appreciate the rush of power that comes as the turbo spins up and starts passing air and fuel at a faster pace. The turbo will put you mid-pack with the ordinary run of cars, with mid-8-second 0-60 times with the manual, slightly worse with the automatic. The gearing is apt enough to both make the car feel responsive and make the most of what’s available under the hood. In a car that weighs about 2,800 pounds, the base engine provides merely adequate performance, but I do mean adequate, in the sense that you’ll neither die of boredom in the 10-plus seconds it takes to reach 60 from a stop nor pump great rushes of adrenaline when contemplating a freeway merge.

The 1.8 Turbo makes 150 and 155, respectively, quite a significant difference. The standard 2-liter engine creates 115 horses and 122 foot-pounds of torque.

#Volkwagen gl golf series#

(Diesel fans – you know who you are – can get one in both a GL (base: $16,195) and GLS series ($17,400). If you want the turbo engine, you have to pop for the GLS level, which, so equipped, begins at $17,400. It comes with both the base, two-door version of the Golf (the GL, which starts at $14,900) and the spiffier four-door GLS (starts at $16,350 with five-speed manual). For those to whom a car is mere appliance, the combo would be quite satisfying, although they might be better served, in an economic sense, with the standard energy source, a normally-aspirated 2-liter four. In the case instant, the Golf, the four-speed automatic transmission is a good one, if not great, and actually teams up pretty well with the new 1.8-liter turbocharged engine. They still do, but most modern powerplants, except at the very low end of a manufacturer’s products, produce an abundance of get-up-and-go. One issue used to be that they rob power.

#Volkwagen gl golf driver#

The modern jobs, with their electronic smarts and as many as five forward gears, shift at least as aptly as a skilled driver 99 percent of the time, and, with their varying degrees of manual override, are in some ways better than manual shifters. Over the last 10 years I’ve become more and more an advocate of the automatic transmission. This isn’t the old knee-jerk, “Real men (and women) don’t do slushboxes” thing you still see mindlessly chanted in car magazines.

If you’re going to get a Volkswagen Golf with the nifty turbocharged engine, you’ll be cheating yourself out of a lot of fun if you don’t say no to the optional automatic transmission.