SA Road Tests

Welcome

This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.

*To read one of our archived road tests, just select from the alphabetical menu of manufacturers' names on the left. Hover your cursor over the manufacturer's name, then choose from the drop-down menu that appears.

*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.


Just as we were about to give up hope, Volkswagen’s 2013 Golf GTI restored our faith in the badge

Hail the emperor

Golf GTI. That’s with a capital “I” unlike certain pretenders that rate only a lower case “i”. It stands for Imperator; Latin for Commander or Emperor. GTIs became bland for a while and we still don’t believe that automatic transmission should be an option at all. The electric parking brake is sissy enough. Thankfully our test car’s six-speed manual ‘box, coupled to a decent quantity of power and an indecent infusion of torque, restored our faith. This thing is once again the emperor of all compact muscle cars.

Like other Golf 7s and Mark 3 versions of Audi A3, Seat León and Škoda Octavia, it’s built on VW’s new MQB, or Modulare Querbaukasten (modular transverse matrix) platform. It’s not so much a common floor plan as a system for introducing rationality across disparate platforms that share engine orientation regardless of model, vehicle size or brand. It uses a nuclear set of components; sharing a common engine-mounting core for all drivetrains for example. Apart from reducing weight and complexity, the concept allows diverse models, including those from the company's other brands, to be manufactured at the same plant and cut costs.

All you will be interested in is that Golf Mk7 has a bigger cabin with more shoulder width, increased rear legroom and a bigger boot. Our standard tall passenger gave the back seat area eight, nine and eight points out of ten, respectively, for head, knee and foot space – high praise for a compact car. The luggage bin measures 380 litres, expanding to 1270 as seat backs are folded.

As for muscle, this third-generation, 2.0-litre EA888 engine has undergone cylinder head and turbocharger modifications to find a further seven kilowatts and 70 Newton metres. And that’s the important part. In plain English, a prod on the loud pedal somewhere around 1600 rpm delivers a seamless surge of brute force that keeps on going until the limiter kicks in just shy of 7000. The payoff is that overtaking is quick and effortless.

Suspension changes include setting the car 15 mm lower and reworking both front and rear to improve rigidity and functionality while reducing weight. For example the front suspension features new lower wishbones and scrub radii for improved steering response, retuned spring rates for the anti-roll bars and revised aluminium pivot bearings. Their centre of motion was raised slightly for quicker and more precise response.

Rear suspension components remain basically unchanged in the interest of comfort, although connections for the tubular anti-roll bars and suspension dampers are now made at the spring links. This reduces forces within the suspension while providing significant packaging advantages. What this means is that it handles even more sweetly than before. And still smiles at speed bumps.

Speaking of steering response; progressive gearing, with stronger electrical input, quickens the ratio at the extremes so you get the job done with less work – 2,1 turns lock to lock on GTI rather than 2,75 turns on cooking models. This goes unnoticed until you realise that you’re crossing your wrists less often. Caution: we shouldn’t actually mention that because advanced-driving instructors get quite upset when you do so. One is apparently supposed to feed the wheel from hand to hand in short movements. Yeah, right!

Apart from suspension and engine, the GTI package includes excellent leather seats with warming function for cold winters; the usual VW black-on-black interior but with contrasting red stitching on seats, door pulls, armrest, steering wheel and gearshift gaiter; red striping, red brake calipers, subtly different air inlets and a spoiler on the trailing edge of the roof.

The package of electronic aids is rather impressive with antilock brakes, antispin regulation, ESP with brake assist and electronic differential locking, transverse differential lock, EBD and multi-collision braking assistance. That electric parking brake features auto hold for driving away on hills without rolling back. Attention assist, seven airbags, ISOFix anchors, electric mirrors and windows, an automatically dipping rearview mirror, dual zone Climatronic air conditioning, automatic door locking, an onboard computer, cruise control with speed limiter, front and rear fog lights, automatic headlamps and rain sensing wipers are there too. As we mentioned a few years ago, it’s basically your dad’s Audi in a compact package - just more fun to drive.

That could be its eventual downfall; while brilliant to drive with endless power and handling to match, it has lost its youthful edge. Competitors are crowding in and every one of them wants to be Emperor. Unless Volkswagen rediscovers the GTI spirit, the final showdown could come soon.

Test car from VWSA press fleet

The numbers
Price: R368 300
Engine: 1984 cc, DOHC, 16-valve, four-cylinder, turbopetrol
Power: 162 kW between 4500 and 6200 rpm
Torque: 350 Nm between 1500 and 4400 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 6,5 seconds
Maximum speed: 246 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 9,2 l/100 km. (If you want better, drive like your mother)
Tank: 50 litres
Warranty: 3 years/120 000 km
Service plan: 5 years/90 000 km; at 15 000 km intervals

What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material. If I ever place an article that doesn't cover most things, it's probably because I have dealt with that vehicle at least once already, so you will be able to find what you want in another report under the same manufacturer's heading in the menu on the left.

My reviews and launch reports appear on Thursdays in the Wheels supplement to The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles each month, most months of the year (except over the festive season) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police.

Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.



Comments?
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