The Black Nine

DRIVING THE MID-CYCLE REFRESH OF THE SEVENTH-GENERATION VW GOLF

- Michael Febbo

The mid-cycle refresh has become an industry standard for car companies keeping a car model around for five to six years. What that refresh includes is anything but standardized, ranging from minor cosmetic updates all the way up to Porsche switching from naturally aspirated to turbocharged engines in the second-generation 991. Volkswagen hasn’t gone quite so extreme as switching engine philosophies with the MK7.5 Golf family, but we did find some worthwhile updates in the new cars.

First, I should point out, the e-Golf is actually updated for the 2017 model year, while the rest of the line gets updated for model year 2018. I drove the new e-Golf in Los Angeles a few weeks before driving several of the other Golfs in Germany and Austria. It seemed appropriate, piloting the all-electron-fueled Golf through traffic-choked L.A. while getting the other cars on the winding mountain roads and high-speed Autobahns of their home turf.

The most important change for the MK7.5 e-Golf is unquestionably the increased battery size to 35.8 kWh, up from 24.2 kWh of the previous car. Range has increased from a rated 83 miles to a much more usable by the average person 125 miles. The electric motor has also been improved going from 115 hp and 199 lb-ft of torque up to 134 hp—the same as the old 9A 2.0L 16-valve if I remember correctly—and 214 lb-ft of torque, more than we ever dreamed of in the MK2 Golf days. The 7.5 might feel just slightly faster, but having driven several of the pre-refreshed cars that I wasn’t quite sure how you had to drive them to get 83 miles out of a charge, the new car seems like I could easily get 125 miles from charge to charge.