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Previous, current and prospective Citi Golf owners should pay extra attention today as I’ve just tested the modern equivalent of their favourite urban runabout. That’s right; if you had/have/want that nippy little number from three decades ago, there’s now a fresher alternative.
Last Monday I got up with a spring in my step, put on my best shirt and zipped through to Volkswagen in town to pick up my new Polo press demonstrator. Unfortunately there was a bit of an internal mix-up and instead I got handed a key marked “Grey Golf R”. Oh well.
Baie jare gelede was ‘n goeie vriend van my skakelbeampte by Volkswagen in Duitsland en het my met groot entoesiasme vertel van hulle 4×4 voertuig wat ‘n jaar of vier later bekendgestel sou word. Dit het toe geblyk die Touareg te wees en het ek die besonderse voorreg gehad om die eerste Suid-Afrikaner te wees om die Touareg op Volkswagen se veldterrein te bestuur. Daarna het die Touareg hier aangekom en vir hom ‘n nismark uitgeslaan.
This weekend I had the fortunate experience of testing a car that I had recently experienced on its media launch. Living with a car for a few days is completely different to chasing five identical cars through carefully selected scenery in an adult adaptation of who-can-get-there-first.
Pull up a chair and settle down in the middle of obscurity and the apex of pleasantness. Volkswagen’s Passat has always been an agreeable motor car which few people understood, especially since the favoured four-door Volksie sedan on local shores has long been the Jetta.
I’m quite sure that I’ve mentioned my love for coupés before, so our invitation to the new Volkswagen Scirocco R launch in Durban resulted in a brief rock-paper-scissors competition at the office, won by yours truly. Perhaps I cheated, perhaps I didn’t, but a few days later I was jetted off to KZN.
Certain names or descriptions have become global icons and in the motoring world they don’t come much more iconic than the acronym GTi. Never mind that it would roughly translate into grand touring injection; when the Germans stuck the badge onto a hot little Golf, a legend was born.
“I hope this car doesn’t end up being a tragic hero” mumbles my co-driver on the recent launch of the new Alfa-Romeo Giulietta. “You know mos, a fantastic car that everyone ignores” he concludes while we negotiate hundreds of kilometers on scenic Boland back roads.
I love coupés. So much so that I recently bought one, although it’s not the one on this page. The pay-off for only having two huge parking-unfriendly doors and barely usable rear seats is that a coupé looks infinitely more attractive than any four-door sedan.
Something tells me the year is drawing to a close. The temperature has breached tolerable levels, the beach I frequent for irregular walks looks like the mall usually does on a Saturday and the jingle-laden mall itself looks like it’s about to burst at the seams.