My first encounter with the fifth generation Volkswagen Golf
was back in 2004, I took the experience seriously as the MkV was replacing a
lackluster fourth generation. Not that the latter was a bad car, it was just
massively unfit to bear the Golf nameplate.
Driving the new spritely Golf was quite a superior
experience in the general sense of the term, and in my estimation the MkV was
one of the best Golf’s ever, bar the first generation’s originality at the
time. However, VW did not hesitate in replacing the Golf with a new supposedly
more refined version; the collective automotive media were in awe at the
unveiling of the new sixth generation VW Golf in summer 2008, as in their eyes
and the eyes of many other industry critics, very little had changed on a
package that seemingly required no refinements.
