Okay, Computer

The core VW model has become more sophisticated, thanks to a host of digital gadgets and clever technologies.

- Dr Kong Yongyao

MY brother-in-law asked me not too long ago what car he should buy.

Neither he nor my sister is particularly flush with petrol in their veins, but they do have an appreciation for quality. There will probably be a child in the equation (or at least my mother very loudly hopes). Sometimes, too, I might borrow their car.

Naturally, they ended up quite quickly with a Volkswagen Golf in the driveway.

Over 43 years, the Golf has combined luxury-car sophistication with family car accessibility to succeed in defining the benchmark for the compact hatchback class. It offers something for everyone – thoroughly sensible packaging, satisfying richness, a touch of verve when you want it, reassuring sobriety when you don’t.

Like the dentist girlfriend you bring home to your approving parents, she is intelligent, well-mannered, in possession of a good job and a great future, exceedingly polite to your grandmother and inoffensively pretty.

Five years on from the launch of the 7th-generation Golf in 2012 and having sold 980,000 units worldwide in 2016 alone, there really is not much wrong with the current model. So, where can Volkswagen look to keep the Golf’s lead with a mid-life facelift?

With one eye on the future, that’s where. Volkswagen calls it the “digitalisation” of the Golf, and the big news here is in infotainment and automation.

You will be forgiven for failing to recognise the new hatchback, because the styling changes amount to merely the gentle grooming of an already anonymously handsome machine. New for 2017 are fresh LED lights, redesigned alloy wheels and a subtle reprofiling of the bumpers.