Volkswagen Golf review

Are you tall and fed up with cars that force you to contort your body to get your legs in, or ruin your bouffant as you smear hair gel across the rooflining? Well, try the Golf; it’s got an abundance of head and leg room in the front, with a generously wide cabin that means you won’t want for shoulder room, either.

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The front door pockets are big enough for a 500ml bottle of water and there are two cupholders in the centre console. You’ll also find a storage bin under the front centre armrest, along with a decent-sized glovebox that’s kept cool by the air-con. Step up from entry-level S to SE trim and you get a discreet drawer under the front passenger seat and a glasses holder by the rear-view mirror.

The Golf’s roomy interior dimensions mean two six-footers will easily fit in the back, although life isn’t so comfortable for a central passenger because of the raised floor in the middle of the car – it’s a pain to clamber over and robs the middle occupant of foot space. But for two people, there’s a decent amount of leg and head room, although nowhere near as much as you’ll find in the cheaper Skoda Octavia.

Large, square rear door openings (on five-door models) make it easy to get in and out of the back without banging your head, and even in the three-door versions access isn’t too bad.

The rear door pockets are narrow, so a 500ml bottle is a bit of a squeeze. However, go for SE trim or above and you'll get a couple of cupholders in the rear centre armrest, along with storage pockets on the rear of the front seats.

The Golf’s rear seats don’t do anything particularly clever. They can’t be slid back and forth, for example, like they can in many SUVs, and they don’t recline either.

As with most hatchbacks, though, you can fold the seatbacks, in a 60/40 split, down by pulling a lever next to the outer head restraints. Once dropped, the seatbacks lie virtually flat without you first needing to flip up the seatbases, like you have to in the rival Ford Focus.

You can pay extra on five-door SE and SE Navigation models to have a front passenger seat that folds completely flat, enabling you to carry seriously long items. Three-door versions get easy-entry front seats; they move up as they slide out of the way, making it easier to get in and out of the back of the car, before returning to their original position.

There’s plenty of room in the boot for the weekly food shop and you can just about squeeze in a set of golf clubs (minus any long woods) or a fold-up baby buggy; the fact that the boot is square-shaped helps make it easy to pack, too. That said, an Octavia has a much larger boot, making it a better choice if you regularly need to lug around big loads.

All Golf models, except the GTE, have a false boot floor that lets you create two separate compartments and raise the load level so there’s no step in the floor of the extended load bay once the rear seats are folded down. With the floor in its highest setting, there’s practically no lip to negotiate when lifting heavy items in and out of.

SE models upwards have a through-load facility. This allows you to carry long, thin items, such as skis, without folding down the rear seats.