Driving the 2015 VW Golf Sportwagen, the Euro Efficiency

The first car I bought as an adult was a Volkswagen Passat station wagon. It was 2002, I was a relative newlywed, and we had a baby on the way. We didn’t have any interest in an SUV, but we also needed to haul things. The Passat wagon served us perfectly for several years. We managed to trade it in before it started giving us problems. There are no negative memories.

But Volkswagen sent the Passat wagon out the door. They instead decided to spend a lost decade focusing its middle-class family-driving efforts instead on more expensive SUV models like the Tiguan. They offered a Jetta wagon, but it barely made a ripple.

To be fair, the Passat wagon was basically the last of its kind, the final viable vehicle remaining in a dying segment. But it still left a gap in the Volkswagen product line. Until now.

I was pretty shocked when I walked into the courtyard of an Austin hotel to see the 2015 VW Golf Sportwagen. It looked almost interchangeable with my old Passat. This Sportwagen was the exact same size and the exact same shape. But this was more than a decade on, three lifetimes in car years. It may look identical, but it’s better in pretty much every other way.

The Sportwagen contains identical DNA to the regular Golf, which won everyone’s Car Of The Year award for 2015, including Yahoo’s. It’s made with the same Modular Transverse (MQB) architecture, the state-of-the-art in modern car construction. This wagon was always part of VW’s ambitious makeover for the Golf.

It also benefits from improved engine technology. There are two choices. A 1.8-liter, four-cylinder turbo gas engine generates 170 hp and gets 35 mpg combined on the six-speed automatic transmission, or 36 mpg when paired with the five-speed manual transmission, which is five mpg better than the outgoing Jetta model. The VW 2-liter, 150-hp turbo diesel engine, which VW is pushing hard on these shores, gets 42 mpg combined, 43 when paired with a manual. Those are mileage numbers to inspire envy in the competition, which can't beat them without a hybrid system.