Review
Motor manufacturers love to find new niches to fit their cars into, but the Golf Plus is maybe taking things a bit too far. Volkswagen already has a perfectly good mid-sized MPV in the shape of the seven-seat Touran, and now it's also got the Golf Plus as an alternative take on a similar theme: only five seats, but taller and more spacious than the Golf it's based on, a rival to cars like the Seat Altea and Ford C-Max rather than the Vauxhall Zafira.
And if you're in the market for a slightly taller Golf, the Plus might be for you. This is one of those cars that delivers on exactly what it promises on the tin. The design looks a bit pudgy next to the elegant visual simplicity of the Golf, and the Plus's rear lights have a very aftermarket appearance, almost as if they've been bought at Halfords. But there's no arguing with the spacious, well finished cabin, which shares most of the standard Golf's layout, switchgear and instruments. Although roomy, it's still only got five seats, and it lacks the sort of layout flexibility of its proper people-carrier rivals.
On the road the Plus drives as you would expect a slightly taller and pudgier version of the standard Golf to. It still handles bendy roads with reasonable aplomb, while the suspension copes with rougher road surfaces reasonably well. Like the Golf it's great on motorways, cruising happily and quietly at high speeds.
Only a limited range of the Golf's engines are offered, with the 1.6 FSI petrol and 1.9 TDI motors offering reasonable performance for the dynamically undemanding, with the 138 bhp 2.0 litre TDI diesel being as close as the range gets to a performance derivative.