The Golf R and the Golf GTI will still be around after this year but you can say goodbye to the base Golf, which is leaving the American market for good. Or at least until gas prices soar and Americans want good, small, fuel-efficient cars again.
We saw this coming in 2019, when VW killed the Alltrack and SportWagen here, and later the e-Golf too. Before all of that we had a hint that the base Golf would be dead at some point, too.
That day has come to pass.
Herndon, VA — Volkswagen of America announced today that the critically-acclaimed Volkswagen Golf ended production for the U.S. market last week. Volkswagen expects that the model year 2021 Golf models built at the Puebla, Mexico plant will sustain sales of the affordable, European-designed hatchback through year end. The Golf family name will carry on in model year 2022 with the introduction of the all-new Mk 8 Golf GTI and Golf R, arriving this Fall.
The Golf has been sold here since 1974; back then it was called the Rabbit here and started at $2,995; the manual version in 2021 starts at $23,195. VW introduced an eighth-generation Golf in 2019, but we still get the seventh-generation Golf here in the U.S., which is also were things will end.
The Golf competes with cars like the Honda Civic and Mazda 3, and sales here last year were actually pretty good, all things considering, with VW selling 6,063, or 7.4 percent more than in 2019. That is crumbs to an automaker as big as Volkswagen, however, and I’m sure the internal justification here is something along the lines of: Sure, sales are up a little bit but we don’t make that much money on each one anyway, or at least not as much as we do when we sell a Tiguan.
It could also be a nod toward the ID.4 coming to the States, though to be honest Volkswagen’s strategy in the US has confused me for a little while now. That’s because there just doesn’t seem to be one, though the pandemic also threw a wrench in things, like it did for everyone else. Get your base Golf while supplies last.
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