VW offers best look yet at 2020 Golf Mk8 before fall debut
Its camouflage is similar to the camo wrapped around the electric ID 3.
The 2020 Volkswagen Golf in the US will be the final model year of the seventh-generation hatchback, but in Europe, the 2020 model year will bring an entirely new Golf to market. We haven't heard too much about it yet, despite an impending reveal, but VW has finally seen fit to throw a teaser our way.
Volkswagen on Wednesday published a teaser for the eighth-generation Golf, which is slated to debut this fall. The new hatchback was originally scheduled for a Frankfurt Auto Show debut, but VW reportedly pushed back the Golf in order to let the forthcoming ID 3 electric hatchback take the spotlight for itself.
Not much appears to have changed between earlier spy shots and the teaser we see here. It's wrapped in what appears to be a black-and-white version of the camouflage that hides the ID 3, and thankfully, it's not the best camo out there. The headlights are positioned a little lower on the front end, giving the hood a stronger sort of eyebrow line across the front end. The general side shape is pretty close to the seventh-generation Golf, although the rear end looks to have a little more of a fastback-type slope to it, likely capitalizing on the market's desire for those kinds of looks on cars and SUVs .
Giving the ID 3 space to breathe wasn't the only reason we heard for the Mk8 Golf's delayed debut. In April, a report claimed that the new Golf was beset with software-based setbacks, related at least in part to its over-the-air upgrade capability. This reportedly messed with not only the scheduled debut, but also the start of production, which the report claims has been scaled back dramatically for the 2019 calendar year. The most recent report we read claims the Golf debut will now take place in October, which will slot nicely between the Frankfurt and Los Angeles auto shows.
While we won't get the Mk8 Golf for about a year after Europe (Yanks had the same delay in receiving the seventh-gen Golf, too), VW is already winding things down for the 2020 model year in the US, creating one-ish-year gaps for models like the Golf R. We'll likely receive only a slice of the total Golf variants on offer -- the premature deaths of the Alltrack and SportWagen lead us to believe that the report claiming the US will only receive Mk8 GTI and Golf R variants is, in fact, true.
