Golf 2.0 Auto, my opinions after driving one.

tomstickland

I normally drive round in a 1991 BMW E30 318iS. 17 year old, 1.8 16v engine, about 130BHP and a lot of fun.

I borrowed a Golf 2.0 Auto today. 140BHP I think. It does everything competantly, but as for basic driving pleasure it has virtually none. Sure, it has a lot of grip and is unphased by big sweeping corners. Maybe Ok for motorways, but it offered no prospect of making driving enjoyable on any other roads.

I'm talking about it doing what it's been told to without intervening in some way and some basic feedback.
The auto box is slow to respond, even in sport mode. Push the pedal and there's a 0.5s delay before it wakes up, changes down and gets on with it.
Worse still, there's no way of holding it in a gear for a corner. It annoyed me by changing half way round a corner a few times. Maybe this is just a problem with auto boxes in general.

The soft suspension combined with brakes that do nothing and then bite hard meant that there's no decent way of feathering them to gradually knock a bit of speed of.

I could detect no feeling whatsoever in the steering either.

Maybe this is indicative of most new cars. Competent, but very, very dull. The spec list might be pages long, but the most basic feedback seems to be forgotten.
I think I'll stick with my old BMW.

harveybobbles

2.0 Auto?

2.0 Petrol or Deisel...?

tomstickland

Diesel TDi.

harveybobbles

Ah! Very torquey h'engine then! Not clever with td engine...

Oh well. nite lol

ManAtHome

tomstickland wrote: »

The auto box is slow to respond, even in sport mode. Push the pedal and there's a 0.5s delay before it wakes up, changes down and gets on with it.
Worse still, there's no way of holding it in a gear for a corner. It annoyed me by changing half way round a corner a few times. Maybe this is just a problem with auto boxes in general.

LOL - a whole half-second (shades of Death Race 2000...?)

Slow in, accelerete through generally holds it in gear on most auto boxes (even flabby BMWs), maybe the golf one really is crap...

tomstickland

I've been told it might be the "antiquated and slow crappy auto box".

daveyjp

It isn't antiquated or old it's an absolutely brilliant DSG gearbox (manual with twin auto clutches and fitted to Veyron) - I'm on my second and it changes far quicker than you can manually - once you learn to drive it properly, which in a day you haven't had time to do.

What your car didn't have is steering wheel paddles which are a must for twisty roads - they are an option on VWs, standard on Audis. You can hold in gear by pushing the gearstick towards the passenger seat and going into manual mode.