Driving the Volkswagen Golf Sportsvan: every young Euro family’s dream

The new Volkswagen Golf Sportsvan showed up at last year’s Frankfurt Motor Show, as a successor to the humble Golf Plus, which sold a not so humble 900,000-odd units in its life without the United States or Canada even being aware of it. The new one could change that right quickly.

The Plus was essentially a larger looking Golf, though narrower, riding higher with a little more vertical room and cabin length inside. The new Sportsvan takes this theme further in ways that could – if ever approved for Stateside import from, say, VW's factory in Puebla, Mexico, — play to an American audience. The package here is a full 5.3 inches longer than the Plus with a 4.2-inch longer wheelbase and a lower hip-point for all passengers. All of these increases mean goodly spaciousness even for this six-foot tall American driver. Versus the Golf hatchback body, the Sportsvan is markedly more accommodating and practical, even though from some frontal angles it may not appear so different.

In a valiant attempt to try and find a competitor already on U.S. soil, the closest I get to the Sportsvan’s mission and dimensions is: Mercedes B-Class Electric Drive, Buick Encore, Ford C-Max, Subaru VX Crosstrek, or Scion XB. It’d probably realistically come down to the Encore (a little smaller than the V-Dub), the C-Max (a little bigger), and the B-Class which is about the Sportsvan’s equal.

In typical Euro-practical car fashion, the Golf Sportsvan can be had with one of a few small four-cylinder engines in a variety of power/torque ratings that, driven well, can return comfortable fuel mileage averaging a 20 percent improvement over the Golf Plus ratings. I managed to focus hard on the top of the range Highline trim 148-hp 2.0-liter turbodiesel with six-speed DSG automated gearbox, and then one at the same trim level with 148-hp 1.4-liter turbo gasoline engine and six-speed manual shifter. Generally, I enjoyed both quite a lot, but the torque advantage — at 251 lb.-ft. between 1,750 and 3,000 rpm — of the biggest TDI powertrain easily won me over.

What would have helped really assessi these haulers would have been to load in about 300 pounds of child and luggage-shaped ballast and then set loose on the southern French hills. Testing these Sportsvans with just li’l ol’ me in the driver’s seat started feeling a bit pointless after around 100 miles of beautiful countryside. With the curb weight down by nearly 200 pounds versus the smaller Plus, the sturdy MPV-style suspension settings made the ride a little overly responsive. (VW could also have thrown in a looped soundtrack of children whining or singing in the back seat.)

The Sportsvan is the largest yet vehicle to use the relatively new VW MQB modular vehicle architecture for transverse engines, and the sophistication of the ride shows it. This is the best driving boring little thing on the planet right now. The consistent positioning of the engines on the MQB chassis is the secret to much finer passenger legroom up front, besides the approach saving VW Group several billions of dollars by unifying the architecture strategy like this.