The most successful German car, the Volkswagen Golf has captured the hearts of auto enthusiasts worldwide for 50 years. What makes the hatch, that transcends the barriers of culture and class, such an automotive icon?
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00:00 The VW Golf, one of the most successful cars in the world.
00:08 Extraordinarily ordinary.
00:10 But what's so special about it?
00:14 Nothing. There is nothing exceptional, but everything fits.
00:20 An iconic German car that's remained true to itself for 50 years.
00:26 Spectacularly unspectacular.
00:31 A Golf in its various generations was always recognizable as a Golf.
00:37 You knew what you had.
00:44 The Golf, the most successful German car of all time, appeals to young and old alike.
00:50 It's found more than 35 million buyers worldwide.
00:54 Across all social classes.
01:00 The senior doctor drove to the clinic in a Golf, the letter carrier drove one to work in the morning and then delivered his letters in another Golf.
01:08 No matter your social class or your job, it's just a normal car.
01:17 The Golf has conquered the whole world.
01:19 From Brazil to South Africa, in many places it's become part of the national culture and survived political upheaval.
01:28 During apartheid it was inaccessible to a lot of the oppressed, but then after we got our freedom it was accessible to anyone.
01:37 Volkswagen means a lot to Brazilian culture, especially the Golf models that we have here.
01:46 And what's next for the Golf? There's heated, divisive debate about that on its 50th birthday.
01:54 The challenge now is to continue this success story.
02:00 You don't have to revolutionize everything if you think what's there isn't that bad.
02:07 The Golf is in a way a symbol of the tragedy actually happening in the automotive industry.
02:16 People still love the shape and the size of the Golf.
02:19 Whoever designed the Golf, yeah, they did a good job.
02:23 It was a revolutionary car design.
02:26 And this revolutionary star designer comes from Italy.
02:30 With Southern European flair, Giorgetto Giugiaro broke all conventions in the early 1970s to create a sensible, compact car.
02:41 Its form, architecture and technical and functional framework are like the harmony of a hit song.
02:53 They're well-matched notes that create a harmony when you put them together.
03:05 Giugiaro, who was voted designer of the century for creating unique and legendary vehicles for a wide variety of car makers,
03:13 was commissioned by Volkswagen to develop a successor to the Beetle.
03:21 And he made it radically different from the perennial bestseller.
03:24 Angular instead of round, front instead of rear-wheel drive, water-cooled instead of air-cooled.
03:32 The Golf was smaller than the Beetle on the outside, but much roomier on the inside.
03:39 The key feature of the Golf, I'll show you here,
03:48 it's the sloping A-pillar and the sloping hood, while the belt line is lower.
03:58 They are the facets of these notes like those used to compose music.
04:05 And they surprise those who look at it with a harmony that's not perceived with the conscious mind.
04:14 People just feel it.
04:18 And people immediately felt the benefits of the car.
04:23 VW soon launched the Golf GTI for drivers who liked it sporty.
04:28 Since then, the Golf has consistently been the best-selling car in Germany, frequently in Europe and in some years even worldwide.
04:38 Yes, I believe that the Golf actually managed to bend the zeitgeist of the industry into sheet metal,
04:46 a proven technology that was very solid, that you could rely on.
04:54 The Golf is now in its eighth generation, a car that changed the industry and even established a new vehicle category, the Golf-Class.
05:06 At its core, the Golf has not really changed in 50 years.
05:16 They have actually managed to change the Golf very gradually, slowly, in an evolutionary way,
05:22 so that the new generation is very reminiscent of the old one.
05:29 Customers have not been scared off by a completely new design.
05:36 That's why there is a very strong customer loyalty to this car, because you knew what you had.
05:44 The best overview of the car's development can be found in the world's largest private Golf collection in the Austrian town of Stockerau.
05:56 Josef Juser has brought together 114 Golfs, ranging from the most unusual with sliding doors to the fastest tuned GTI models.
06:10 It's the Golf fans' life's work.
06:14 The Golf, because it was the first vehicle where everything really was just right.
06:20 I used to drive all brands, almost all brands, when I was young.
06:24 The Golf really was the car you sat in and everything was just right.
06:28 The perfect car, as if it had been built for me.
06:34 Many Golf fans formed clubs to cultivate their passion.
06:38 Only owners of the first model series from the 1970s gather at the meetings of one such group, called Original Golf One.
06:47 But people from all walks of life come together here.
06:53 The senior doctor drove to the clinic in a Golf, the letter carrier drove one to work in the morning and delivered his letters in another Golf.
07:01 And the secretary in the factory drove a Golf, and the boss's wife may have also had a Golf as a private car.
07:07 It's a classless car, understated, reliable, practical.
07:11 In essence, it offers everything you still need to get from A to B today.
07:18 There are even some Golf One owners who bought their cars in the former East Germany.
07:23 In 1978, Volkswagen delivered 10,000 Golfs there in exchange for sheet metal, heating oil and tyres.
07:31 It wasn't easy for people there to get their hands on a Golf.
07:34 Reinhard Martinez got lucky because he'd registered with the authorities for an East German car long before.
07:41 And so he was able to get a West German car that he could work on in his garden.
07:47 At the time I worked for Interflug as a test engineer, but I wasn't a comrade, so I approached it optimistically.
07:56 I thought, you have to get your hands on this car.
07:59 So of course I gave up the Lada I had registered for 12 years earlier in order to get it.
08:06 Golfs were all the rage, not only in East Germany, but also in communist Yugoslavia.
08:13 The foundations for the Golf enthusiasm in the Balkans were laid back in the 1970s and remain in place today.
08:20 Back then, Volkswagen produced the first Golf models made in Sarajevo, today the Bosnian capital, as part of a joint venture.
08:29 The dream of every average Yugoslavian was to own a Golf.
08:36 Of course, you had to wait for a Golf, if you had the money for it.
08:41 My wait was up to six months.
08:45 I was able to save some money so that I could make my dream come true.
08:51 It was a big deal for me as a young man.
08:55 My generation will get what I'm talking about.
08:59 Volkswagen's production facilities were largely destroyed in the Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995.
09:08 Golf production was discontinued, but people's enthusiasm for the German car has survived.
09:15 It's not anymore just a car. It's an emotion.
09:22 An emotion that Bosnian people and others hold in their hearts.
09:29 It's emotions about wealthy years before war, about survival during the war, and after war.
09:37 That was an opportunity for the people to feel themselves again, like normal people, that we are again in that condition like before.
09:48 In South Africa, too, the Golf has survived a change in political systems and is now part of the country's culture.
09:55 Like a witness to history, it joined the long journey of the black population from the oppression of apartheid to the present day.
10:05 During apartheid, it wasn't accessible to a lot of the oppressed.
10:09 Maybe it was still expensive to those ones who were oppressed.
10:13 But then, after we got our freedom, I think it became accessible to almost everyone.
10:22 A very special Golf model was even built in South Africa.
10:27 Because the Golf 2, which replaced the one in 1984, was too complex and expensive for South Africa,
10:33 the Golf 1 simply continued to be built there in a slightly modified form, under the name City Golf.
10:40 This is the car. My 2007 City Golf. It was a base model.
10:49 And that's how it looks from inside. I can go outside and show you the outside as well.
10:54 From the MK1 to the City Golf, this is how you differentiate them, this line here.
11:00 So that's how you differentiate. The old MK1 doesn't have that line, but the City Golf has that line.
11:08 When production of the City Golf was finally discontinued in 2009,
11:18 the whole country bid farewell to their favourite car with emotional outpourings.
11:27 I think it will never die. In South Africa, it will never die.
11:31 Because there are people who look after them, it will live forever.
11:35 I'm going to save one for my son. He's still two years old.
11:39 He'll find it maybe when he's 18 or 21.
11:43 If he's interested, he'll also have his own. But if he's not interested, I'll keep it for myself.
11:54 The Brazilians got a specially built model, the VW Gol, one of the country's most popular cars between 1980 and 2022.
12:01 Although it had Audi 80 and VW Passat DNA, it came with body styles reminiscent of the Polo and Golf.
12:08 Volkswagen means a lot to Brazilian culture, especially for the Gol models that we have here.
12:18 They created Gol to be a cheaper car for families, for more simpler people, which is the base of Brazil, you know?
12:27 And even in France, people take their hats off to the Golf.
12:33 A special exhibition at the Retromobile Classic Car Show in Paris commemorates the Golf's history.
12:39 Probably the only foreign car that has ever managed to seriously compete with the French local favourites.
12:47 A car from abroad that left its mark on the French. You were suddenly driving a car that was incredibly young.
12:53 The Citroën 2CV, for example, was a comfortable French car, but none of our cars had that dynamism.
13:10 A Golf really is more than just a car. Golf stands for a way of life, almost a profession of faith.
13:19 You live with it, identify with it, so in a way the expression "generation Golf" makes sense.
13:30 After 50 long years, the days of the Golf looked like they were numbered, as Volkswagen prepares for a new age of mobility.
13:39 Electromobility, with the development of the ID model series. But don't count the Golf out just yet.
13:46 There has now been a change in product strategy at Volkswagen.
13:54 The ID.3, which is positioned in the same vehicle class as the Golf, was unable to build on the Golf's success.
14:00 And now Volkswagen is going the other way and taking these well-known performance characteristics of the Golf
14:07 and transforming them into electric mobility.
14:10 And the aim now is to build on its iconic history and continue this success story with an electric car.
14:19 And this is what it could look like, the Golf 9 with electric drive, which will be launched at the earliest in 2026.
14:33 The Golf is in a way a symbol of the tragedy actually happening in the automotive industry.
14:40 We are changing over to new engines, namely the electric engines.
14:45 They are completely different parameters and still the car maintains exactly the same shape as before.
14:52 So when Beetle became Golf, changing the engine, it changed also the shape.
14:59 Now 50 years after the first Golf, I believe we have to understand that the way we use cars has thoroughly changed.
15:07 And so it's quite a tragedy that VW says we keep the Golf forever.
15:12 We buy the Golf because of the meaning of it. And in a new world, which is the one we are approaching, there should be new meanings.
15:26 Could it be time for Giorgetto Giugiaro to radically redesign VW's best-selling model?
15:31 Doesn't VW need a little revolution every 50 years?
15:35 Unlikely. The Italian now only works for Chinese carmakers.
15:39 He ended his collaboration with Volkswagen in 2015.
15:43 In design, it's not democratic, you understand?
15:49 I didn't have the freedom to propose the things I wanted to do when I agreed to join that large corporate group.
15:57 They don't have any courage because they're the men in charge and they don't want to put their positions of power at risk.
16:07 They don't take risks. They do things more or less the same as ever in order to avoid risks because they don't have any vision.
16:18 But vision is what led Giorgetto Giugiaro to create his milestones in automotive design.
16:24 I have lived and built a career out of my absolute freedom.
16:35 Because when I made my first cars, I had incredible freedom.
16:44 The VW Golf, a symbol of freedom and creativity in car design.
16:49 The car for everyone, which people, old and young, all over the world have embraced.
16:56 A car that has become the flagship of the German automotive industry.
17:03 Its past is glorious, but opinions are split on what lies ahead for it.
17:10 VW Golf. The future of automotive design.
17:14 it.
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