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VW to kill off Golf Alltrack and SportWagen at the end of 2019

That report from earlier in the year is slowly coming true.

Andrew Krok Reviews Editor / Cars
Cars are Andrew's jam, as is strawberry. After spending years as a regular ol' car fanatic, he started working his way through the echelons of the automotive industry, starting out as social-media director of a small European-focused garage outside of Chicago. From there, he moved to the editorial side, penning several written features in Total 911 Magazine before becoming a full-time auto writer, first for a local Chicago outlet and then for CNET Cars.
Andrew Krok
2 min read
2018 VW Golf Sportwagen
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2018 VW Golf Sportwagen

Full disclosure: I am the proud owner of a 2016 Golf SportWagen, and I am not taking this news very well.

Manuel Carrillo III/Roadshow

If you're a fan of the and Alltrack wagon family, you might want to grab a box of cryin' tissues, because the automaker is about to stomp on your hopes of picking up a fresh wagon when the eighth-generation Golf rolls into town.

Volkswagen announced on Wednesday that the Golf SportWagen and will cease production at the end of the 2019 model year. The Alltrack will continue to be built in Mexico through December, but after that, it's done. Dead. Kaput.

Americans have no one to blame for this but themselves. The Alltrack, which for the record is a great middle ground between SUVs and traditional passenger cars, clearly was not enough to satiate Americans' desires for ride height and cargo space. It's unclear if the cars will live on in Europe, but given that SUV fever has yet to strike as severely over there, it seems likely that at least one wagon variant will return with some new skin in 2020.

The wagon-shaped hole in VW's US lineup will instead be filled with new SUVs. In its release, Volkswagen pointed out that it's preparing to launch three new SUVs within the next two years. Later this year, we'll get to see the production version of the two-row Cross Sport. Next year, we'll witness the debut of the first ID electric vehicle in the US, the ID Crozz. Finally, in 2021, we'll have a new ute that slots in beneath the . That's... something, I guess.

There is still some hope, however futile, that a wagon may one day appear again on our shores. "As the ID Buzz concept demonstrates, the flexibility of our EV platform gives us the ability to revive body styles of the past, so anything is possible," said Scott Keogh, CEO of Volkswagen of America, in a statement.

It's looking more and more like VW's comments about unconfirmed eighth-generation Golf variants were just damage control. In May, a high-ranking VW employee told Motor1 that only the and variants of the upcoming eighth-generation Golf would come to the US, likely due to low demand spread across the other variants. VW's spokespeople quickly hopped into the conversation to say that other models were "under consideration," but considering two of the three (base Golf, Alltrack and SportWagen) have just been thrown into the wood chipper, I'm not holding out a lot of hope for numero tres.

2018 Volkswagen Golf Sportwagen gushes with value

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