We were a bit underwhelmed in the BusinessCar office when the pictures of the new VW Golf landed on our virtual doormat the other week.
It was described as “conservative in the extreme”, “dull”, “Scirocco-esque” and several other unprintable things that caused more innocent office members to blush.
It was also described as being a combination of the previous two generations, the mk4 and mk5. So the office junior was promptly dispatched to find pictures of all the predecessors for comparison’s sake.
Once we’d stopped him drooling over shots of early GTIs, we lined up the six pictures and stood back.
The only big change in styling came between the second and third generations when round headlights were replaced by an elongated oval.
Compare mk1 and mk6, however, and the difference is huge, but still recognisably Golf-like.
It was the Scirocco comment that got us thinking, though. We all reacted with confusion and indifference when the pictures of that arrived, too. But when we got to see it in the flesh we quite liked it.
Perhaps the problem at VW isn’t with the designers, but with the photographers.
