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VW Golf 1.6 TDI Comfortline DSG Test Drive – No face, no name, no number (needed)

The greatest incarnation of "a car" keeps its laurels

Overall Score 85/100

Don’t judge the latest VW Golf, the facelifted version of the seventh generation, based on the reviews which call it dull, boring or uninteresting. It’s none of those things, especially if you get past the predictable exterior look, and have a sit inside, then go for a drive.

It’s really surprisingly fun to throw into corners, the steering is brilliant by modern electric rack standards and the chassis is predictable. The handling blends fun and safety with German rigor, and it’s frankly one of the hardest cars to crash we’ve ever driven.

Aside from its dynamic abilities, it offers supreme all-around visibility, oodles of space for the five people it can fairly easily carry and an interior that feels both upmarket and tightly screwed together.

Even the economy-minded engine-gearbox combo is enjoyable, helped by the broad spread of torque and power of the updated 1.6-liter TDI engine. It’s by no means fast, but as a tool to just commute without a care in the world, it’s just a peach.

Photos: Radu Chindriș

RECOMMENDED FOR:

Families, Managers, Sales Agents, Seniors, Young And Single

CREATED FOR:

Highways, Urban Driving, Winding Roads

HATS OFF FOR:

Comfort, Ergonomics, Modularity, Passenger Space, Road Handling

BANG FOR THE BUCK:

Powertrain 8/10.

Volkswagen updated its 1.6-liter diesel engine along with the Golf facelift, giving it 5 more horsepower, for a total of 115. Torque remains the same, at 250 Nm, but it does stay constant from 1,500 to 3,200 rpm so you’ll rarely be left wanting for more shove.

It works really well with the seven-speed DSG gearbox which is not only very swift to shift, but also really smooth while it’s at it – even if you tug on it to put it in sport mode. Doing that doesn’t make it any faster, but you do notice do notice the shifts being fired away at a more rapid rate. My only slight gripe with the oil burner was just how gruff and clattery it sounded until it got really warmed up – you have to endure its tappety sound for a while before it reaches optimum temperature and finally shuts up.

Handling 9/10

The facelifted seventh-gen Golf’s handling was a revelation. I was expecting a competent but dull experience, with more emphasis on comfort than cornering. It’s actually nothing like that and between its quick and precise steering, not excessive body roll and the short overhangs, it really feels fun to toss around – it is only as boring as the person who drives it.

Safety 9/10

All new Golfs come with autonomous emergency braking, which VW calls “Multi Collision Brake.” It can stop the car at city speeds, but at anything higher than that it will just try to mitigate as much of the crash as possible.

Aside from the usual airbags that cover all possible hard contact points in a crash, with the exception of the passenger’s knees (only the driver’s knees get airbag protection).

Another electronic feature whose place is in between the safety and handling categories is the XDS electronic differential. It’s standard on all models and what it tries to do is mimic a mechanical limited-slip differential, but it does so using the brakes. This may have been why during my drive I never ever spun the unloaded inside wheel, even with stability and traction switched off.

Comfort 9/10

The Golf strengthens the age-old cliché of being called an excellent all-rounder. Its latest version not only corners with precision and confidence, but it also rides very plushly indeed. No matter what kind of bump or pothole you’re going to encounter, it will most of the time glide right over with minimal fuss.

Its excellent seats help too, and it seems that VW has finally nailed the compromise of having lateral support with firm cushions and bolsters, while at the same time not feeling like you’re sitting in a hospital waiting room chair.

Quality 9/10

We won’t bore you with specifics here. The Golf’s cabin is superb. With it the car punches well above its price bracket, especially in terms of perceived quality, and if you spec it right the ambiance will be equally premium-esque.

No more needs to be said here.

Practicality 9/10

Being practical is what the Golf is designed to do. It has all the cubby holes you could want, it has modular cup holders and clever touches to help keep your belongings in check. It’s probably the class benchmark in this respect, even if its 380-liter boot is not the biggest.

Infotainment 7/10

Our tester had the mid-range infotainment solution. It features an 8-inch screen with capacitive buttons on its sides and two rotary knobs: one for volume, one for tuning. What it lacked was a nav system, which is a separate option.

The screen itself is excellent to use, it responds very quickly with hardly any lag and the graphics are excellent.

However, it’s a bit daft to charge a few hundreds more of prospective buyers Euros for navigation, in an era when such systems are not only free but also excellent to use. Our car, despite having the second most expensive infotainment option required more of your cash to add nav – not cool.

Efficiency 9/10

Manufacturer claimed figures are never accurate, so VW’s claimed 3.9 l/100km for our 1.6 TDI with DSG sounded like the stuff of fantasy. However, I averaged around 6 l/100km over my three-day test drive of the car, and keep in mind that it was all urban driving, often on very congested roads.

So that means that if you do most of your driving on the motorway and aren’t a serial speeder, you could see that figure dip below the 5 l/100km mark; but only if you don’t take it back into town as it will start climbing again.

Equipment 7/10

Our Comfortline tester was a bit sparsely equipped. Yes, it had the classy looking infotainment, the desirable DSG gearbox and comfort features like climate control and four electric windows, it had ugly halogen headlights and alloy rims that could best be described as “meh.”

If i was buying one of these and didn’t want one of the performance variants, I’d definitely look at getting into a much nicer Highline model. That has different upholstery, some different trim bits and an overall better inside ambiance – our tester, despite not being the base model, kind of felt like one.

Acquisition 9/10

If you can live with its image as a competent commuter pod and are not the kind of person to want to stand out through your choice of car, then there’s literally nothing stopping you from buying one.

In 1.6 TDI Comfortline trim it offers some desirable features, but ther’s no harm in paying a little extra money to buy a Highline model, one with the superb fully-digital gauge cluster that just transforms the inside.

We’d also recommend you take a test drive of the 115 hp diesel first, to make sure you don’t want more power from your Golf. If you do, the 2.0-liter TDI is only marginally less efficient, but considerably punchier and you can even get it with all-wheel drive – that, strangely, can’t be paired with the DSG, which is kind of daft because you can get the same combo in the Golf Alltrack or Skoda’s Octavia Scout.

Either way, the Golf is a sound buy, and it’s still to this day one of the few cars that don’t really let on about the kind of money you’re making. Anybody from a lowly sales rep to a middle manager could be in one of these and you wouldn’t even know it.

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Le Corbusier’s triumphant return to Moscow

The exhibition of French prominent architect Le Corbusier, held in The Pushkin Museum, brings together the different facets of his talent. Source: ITAR-TASS / Stanislav Krasilnikov

The largest Le Corbusier exhibition in a quarter of a century celebrates the modernist architect’s life and his connection with the city.

Given his affinity with Moscow, it is perhaps surprising that the city had never hosted a major examination of Le Corbusier’s work until now. However, the Pushkin Museum and the Le Corbusier Fund have redressed that discrepancy with the comprehensive exhibition “Secrets of Creation: Between Art and Architecture,” which runs until November 18.

Presenting over 400 exhibits, the exhibition charts Le Corbusier’s development from the young man eagerly sketching buildings on a trip around Europe, to his later years as a prolific and influential architect.

The exhibition brings together the different facets of his talent, showing his publications, artwork and furniture design alongside photographs, models and blueprints of his buildings.

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Irina Antonova, director of the Pushkin Museum, said, “It was important for us to also exhibit his art. People know Le Corbusier the architect, but what is less well know is that he was also an artist. Seeing his art and architecture together gives us an insight into his mind and his thought-processes.”

What becomes obvious to visitors of the exhibition is that Le Corbusier was a man driven by a single-minded vision of how form and lines should interact, a vision he was able to express across multiple genres.

The upper wings of the Pushkin Museum are separated by the central stairs and two long balconies. The organizers have exploited this space, allowing comparison of Le Corbusier’s different art forms. On one side there are large paintings in the Purist style he adapted from Cubism, while on the other wall there are panoramic photographs of his famous buildings.

Le Corbusier was a theorist, producing many pamphlets and manifestos which outlined his view that rigorous urban planning could make society more productive and raise the average standard of living.

It was his affinity with constructivism, and its accompanying vision of the way architecture could shape society, which drew him to visit the Soviet Union, where, as he saw it, there existed a “nation that is being organized in accordance with its new spirit.”

The exhibition’s curator Jean-Louis Cohen explains that Le Corbusier saw Moscow as “somewhere he could experiment.” Indeed, when the architect was commissioned to construct the famous Tsentrosoyuz Building, he responded by producing a plan for the entire city, based on his concept of geometric symmetry.

Falling foul of the political climate

He had misread the Soviet appetite for experimentation, and as Cohen relates in his book Le Corbusier, 1887-1965, drew stinging attacks from the likes of El Lissitsky, who called his design “a city on paper, extraneous to living nature, located in a desert through which not even a river must be allowed to pass (since a curve would contradict the style).”

Not to be deterred, Le Corbusier returned to Moscow in 1932 and entered the famous Palace of the Soviets competition, a skyscraper that was planned to be the tallest building in the world.

This time he fell foul of the changing political climate, as Stalin’s growing suspicion of the avant-garde led to the endorsement of neo-classical designs for the construction, which was ultimately never built due to the Second World War.

Situated opposite the proposed site for the Palace of the Soviets, the exhibition offers a tantalizing vision of what might have been, presenting scale models alongside Le Corbusier’s plans, and generating the feeling of an un-built masterpiece.

Despite Le Corbusier’s fluctuating fortunes in Soviet society, there was one architect who never wavered in his support . Constructivist luminary Alexander Vesnin declared that the Tsentrosoyuz building was the "the best building to arise in Moscow for over a century.”

The exhibition sheds light on their professional and personal relationship, showing sketches and letters they exchanged. In a radical break from the abstract nature of most of Le Corbusier’s art, this corner of the exhibition highlights the sometimes volatile architect’s softer side, as shown through nude sketches and classical still-life paintings he sent to Vesnin.

“He was a complex person” says Cohen. “It’s important to show his difficult elements; his connections with the USSR, with Mussolini. Now that relations between Russia and the West have improved, we can examine this. At the moment there is a new season in Le Corbusier interpretation.” To this end, the exhibition includes articles that have never previously been published in Russia, as well as Le Corbusier’s own literature.

Completing Le Corbusier’s triumphant return to Russia is a preview of a forthcoming statue, to be erected outside the Tsentrosoyuz building. Even if she couldn’t quite accept his vision of a planned city, Moscow is certainly welcoming him back.

All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

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Newgeography.com

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Moscow, like other international urban areas , is decentralizing, despite considerable barriers. The expansion will lead to even more decentralization, which is likely to lead to less time "stuck in traffic" and more comfortable lifestyles. Let's hope that Russia's urban development policies, along with its plans to restore population growth, will lead to higher household incomes and much improved economic performance.

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “ War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life ”

Note 1: The 23 ward (ku) area of Tokyo is the geography of the former city of Tokyo, which was abolished in the 1940s. There is considerable confusion about the geography of Tokyo. For example, the 23 ward area is a part of the prefecture of Tokyo, which is also called the Tokyo Metropolis, which has led some analysts to think of it as the Tokyo metropolitan area (labor market area). In fact, the Tokyo metropolitan area, variously defined, includes, at a minimum the prefectures of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama with some municipalities in Gunma, Ibaraki and Tochigi. The metropolitan area contains nearly three times the population of the "Tokyo Metropolis."

Note 2: The expansion area (556 square miles or 1,440 square kilometers) has a current population of 250,000.

Note 3: Includes all residents in suburban districts with at least part of their population in the urban area.

Note 4: Urban area data not yet available.

Photo: St. Basil's Cathedral (all photos by author)

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Russians seeing the light while Western elites are bickering?

What an extremely interesting analysis - well done, Wendell.

It is also extremely interesting that the Russian leadership is reasonably pragmatic about urban form, in contrast to the "planners" of the post-rational West.

An acquaintance recently sent me an article from "The New Yorker", re Moscow's traffic problems.

The article "abstract" is HERE (but access to the full article requires subscription)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_gessen

One classic quote worth taking from it, is: "People will endure all manner of humiliation to keep driving".

I do find it odd that the "New Yorker" article author says nothing at all about the rail transit system Moscow had, on which everyone was obliged to travel, under Communism. It can't surely have vaporised into thin air?

Moscow is a classic illustration of just how outmoded rails are, and how important "automobility" is, when the auto supplants rails so rapidly than even when everybody did travel on rails up to a certain date, and the road network dates to that era, when nobody was allowed to own a car; an article written just 2 decades later does not even mention the rail transit system, other than to criticise the mayor for "failing to invest in a transit system".......!!!!!!!!

This is also a give-away of "The New Yorker's" inability to shake off the modern PC ideology on rails vs cars.

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