A family hatch should be the ideal all-rounder but the Mk8 Golf arrived flawed. The facelift changes things
Isn’t this all reassuringly traditional? You could almost start to forget that five-door family hatchbacks are a thing, but here are three of them and there’s not a raised ride height or charging plug in sight.
They are very much still a thing, though, particularly the Golf. While Toyota and Peugeot buyers have more decisively migrated to smaller cars and crossovers, the Golf remains Volkswagen’s biggest-seller in the UK.
Long may they reign because, as we will rediscover, these kinds of cars are about as archetypically ‘car’ as it gets. The biros of the automotive world: fit for just about any purpose.
You might want a fancy fountain pen, but the good old ballpoint at the bottom of your bag will probably do fine, whether you’re scribbling something down or doing a line drawing.
We have convened this test around the facelifted Golf. Launched in 2020, the Mk8 Golf is emblematic of Volkswagen’s recent struggles.
An unhealthy cocktail of shrinking profit margins and the need (perceived or otherwise) to electrify and digitalise has squeezed the company into taking some drastic actions. And many of those befell the arch-Volkswagen.
The often glitchy and confusing multimedia, the cheapening of the cabin and the infernal touch-sensitive steering wheel buttons mean it hasn’t been as well liked as previous iterations.
At the same time, the Mk8-bashing bandwagon has proven a popular one for the media and other observers, and when looked at with fewer preconceptions, the Mk8 Golf has always been a good car that provides a compelling blend of space and driving manners. Even so, Volkswagen has listened to feedback and addressed many of the Mk8’s undeniable issues.
The old screen and its software have pretty much been binned and replaced, the contentious touch bar remains but now lights up to enable its use at night, and the interior has regained some sense of perceived quality and tactility, including steering wheel buttons for all.
On first acquaintance at its launch events abroad and in the UK, the ‘Mk8.5’ felt like a return to form for the Golf. A class leader? That’s a tougher call to make in isolation, so today we have brought along two rivals.
In the blue corner is the Peugeot 308, one of the more convincing cars to be spun off Stellantis’s front-wheel-drive architectures.
Whether it’s a Vauxhall Astra, DS 4 or Jeep Avenger, all these cars have a similar demeanour about them, but the 308, while being obviously related to its stablemates, has a plush fluidity to the way it drives, a sense that it’s not carrying any more weight and complexity than it needs to. It manages to make the same corporate-issue meat and potatoes taste like French cuisine.
It has been on sale since 2022 so it’s still a few years away from a major update but a new hybrid powertrain is being rolled out across the Stellantis brands and the 308 is the latest beneficiary of it. Although it’s described as a mild hybrid, the 28bhp electric motor is capable of driving the car by itself.
Obviously not very much and not very quickly, but being able to crawl forwards in traffic with the engine off does make a difference to fuel economy and smoothness. The new powertrain also replaces the clunky eight-speed automatic with a slightly less clunky six-speed dual-clutch.
And in the er… other blue corner, we have the Toyota Corolla. The 12th (!) generation of Toyota’s long-running hatchback has been around since 2019 so it’s the oldest car here.
In the case of Toyota, however, that doesn’t matter as much because it has quite an old-school, no-nonsense way of going about things, so its cars don’t date in the same way that stuff with flashy new tech does. The Corolla Commercial we ran for a year proved one of the most unexpectedly popular long-term test cars we’ve had.
That said, the Corolla is the least superficially impressive of our trio inside. The coarse, rubbery material that coats much of the dashboard and the doors is rather plain, and so is the design.
There are no clever little details, no novel materials and no particularly ‘Toyota’ identity to any of the screen graphics.
However, it’s the only one with a chunky gear selector lever and the only one that has physical knobs and buttons for the climate control, including a pair of improbably heavy-duty rocker switches for the heated seats. If you were beamed in from the 1960s, you could easily operate it and everything feels built to last, so it’s functional.
Well, mostly. It’s quite limited on storage options and the cupholders are espresso-sized. Worse is the screen situation. The multimedia system works well enough at a glance, but if you have Apple CarPlay running and want to adjust one of the car’s settings, getting back to the native interface is pretty laborious.
And if you want to turn off the lane keeping assistance or the overspeed warning, you have to navigate a confusing initialism-laden menu in the gauge cluster using the steering wheel buttons. The others manage that better.
It’s good to have both the Corolla and the 308 because they are such polar opposites when it comes to interior ambience. The style-forward Peugeot immediately feels inviting, with its more elaborate design and material choices.
The metal-effect centre console contrasts nicely with the darker fabrics and leather-like materials, the screens look great and the gauge cluster has a neat 3D effect.
Ergonomically, though, it’s a bit of a mess. The i-Cockpit, which positions the gauge cluster high so you can see it above the small steering wheel, works better in the 308 than in most other Peugeots but the wheel still cuts off the bottom of the display for me, and other testers were no less bothered by it.
The climate controls are in the central screen and disappear when you have CarPlay on, and the screen can be pretty laggy.
The Golf, as it is wont to do, splits the difference. Its dash layout is less visually stimulating than the 308’s, but the materials and build quality are solid and pleasing enough.
Apart from a very slight lack of thigh support and steering reach adjustment, there’s nothing remotely odd about the Golf’s driving position, and while its user interface is very screen-heavy, everything is easy to find. The touch bar also gives you direct access to the temperature controls. There’s good interior storage space too, including some big felt-lined door bins.
The Golf is the roomiest as well. The 308 just beats it for boot volume (412 versus 381 litres), but the Golf has more space under the floor (you can even option a proper spare wheel), it has the most leg and head room of all three and you feel the least hemmed in when you sit in the back, which is a problem in the 308. Anyway, if you need more space, all three are also offered as estates.
The versions we have picked represent three different takes on the hybrid. The Golf is a mild hybrid, the Corolla a full hybrid and the 308 might be described as a mild full hybrid.
None of them, however, requires a plug, which instantly makes them dramatically more convenient to anyone who doesn’t have access to overnight charging – which, as it stands, is a lot of people.
Because it’s a mild hybrid, the Golf’s 48V starter-generator never powers the car by itself. It’s very keen to shut the engine down, though. Almost any time you come off the accelerator, the tacho drops to zero.
Touch the throttle, or the brake pedal, and it fires back up and re-engages drive. Some testers found it slightly disconcerting and busy, but it is smooth and it does appear to bring efficiency benefits compared with the manual versions we have driven.
We have found the mild hybrid to be usefully more frugal than the standard car, managing over 50mpg on a mixed route.
The Corolla and 308, despite their beefier hybrid systems, won’t necessarily do much more on the motorway. Where the Corolla’s Toyota-typical full-hybrid drivetrain – with its bigger battery, motor and e-CVT – pulls out a lead is at urban speeds, when it’s able to switch off the engine and run on electric power remarkably often.
I recall that trips to the shop and local pottering about would usually yield 70mpg in that long-termer we had. With no gears to shift, it’s also perfectly smooth and switches between drive and reverse instantly for easy three-point turns – two underrated CVT qualities.
Such ease of operation is something the Peugeot’s six-speed dual-clutch automatic can’t match, and nor does it sip fuel in town as slowly as the Toyota, but it’s good enough, and the 1.2-litre three-cylinder is the fizziest engine here.
While the four-cylinder engines of the Golf and Corolla moan disinterestedly when revved, the three-pot emits quite an appealing thrum.
Overall, none is truly a driver’s car – that’s not really the point of mid-range hatchbacks – but all handle objectively well and are more than enjoyable to punt down a twisty road.
What’s more impressive, certainly vis-à-vis their SUV counterparts, is that they all manage to combine a certain athleticism with genuinely impressive ride comfort. Light(ish) weight and a low centre of gravity always win the day.
The Corolla in particular feels so natural and harmonious. All the controls are light but not insubstantial and you never have to give a second thought about how much pressure to exert on the pedals or wheel.
The delicate steering gains weight as you load up the car in a corner, and when you lift off, the car tucks in neatly. The body moves but never in a way that feels loose or wallowy. It’s beautifully judged.
The other two cars are good, too, but each has its little vices. The Peugeot suffers from the small steering wheel, whose oblong shape makes it harder to gauge how much steering angle to put in.
And because the power steering needs to do the work normally done by the lever effect of a larger steering wheel, feedback is muted too.
Meanwhile, the Golf has a weirdly touchy, inconsistent brake pedal. This particular test car has an ace up its sleeve, though: the Golf is available with the option of adaptive dampers, for quite a reasonable £720.
In the most comfortable setting the Golf feels a bit plusher than the others, and in its Sport mode more precise and direct. It’s not that it’s spectacularly ‘better’ than the Corolla, but the dampers do give it more breadth.
In the end, I’m sorry to make this an ‘everyone’s a winner’ story but the victor here is the humble family hatchback. All three cars will easily crack 50mpg while maintaining good performance and drivability, have a compelling blend of ride, handling and general comfort and, if you don’t go wild with the options, cost less than £35,000. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend any of them, because how much more car do you really need?
Verdict
Okay, I get it: you want a hierarchy. Fine. The first to drop off is the Peugeot. It has more ergonomic foibles than the others, doesn’t handle as naturally, and if you want a high spec it’s the most expensive by some margin – no matter whether you buy it outright or on PCP.
Golf or Corolla? That’s a much tougher question. The Golf has the more upmarket, more practical and quieter interior, without being worse for usability, and thanks to the adaptive dampers and a conventional seven-speed gearbox, it offers quite a versatile driving experience. But then the Corolla feels easier and more natural to drive. It has the fuel economy advantage for suburban drivers and it has the better adaptive cruise control.
Which one is cheaper depends on the spec you want: Volkswagen gives you more freedom to pick and choose options (including a diesel, PHEV or manual), which means that the cheapest Golf is cheaper than the cheapest Corolla, but the most expensive Golf is more expensive than the most expensive Corolla.
They meet somewhere in the middle. In the end, Toyota has one big hammer to beat the competition with: its unequalled reliability record.
You would think Volkswagen would have its electronic ducks in a row by now, but at the UK launch, we found one car with a glitchy screen, and our car for this test at one point briefly refused to start. Anecdotal evidence, but reliability surveys tell a similar story.
The Mk8.5 Golf is a return to form for Volkswagen and here, today, the Golf or Corolla question is one of personal preference, but over the course of multiple years of ownership, the Toyota has got to be a safer bet.
