Volkswagen Golf

It's the year of Waterloo and Watergate - Abba arrive at the Eurovision and take the world by storm, while Richard Nixon is forced out of the White House over allegations of leading a dirty tricks campaign.

In Ireland hopes of peace in the North fall flat as the Sunningdale Agreement collapses in the face of unionist resistance. Dublin is brought to a standstill by a nine-week bus strike.

. . . and the Volkswagen Golf makes its debut, taking the place of the much-revered Beetle. Commentators suggest it's a big mistake - VW can't hope to follow on from the bug's success, they say.

It seems an age away. Nixon is dead and buried, and Abba have long since split and their story is now the stuff of musicals. Yet 30 years on, some things seem remarkably similar - and the latest Golf, the fifth generation, remains unmistakable.

It's got bigger with every makeover, and it's a world apart in finish and refinement. It seems to have had collagen injections to its bumpers and Botox to its facade; the front lights more stretched than the round globes of its youth.

Yet the changes, tweaks and tucks have been performed on a solid foundation. The Golf has good bone structure, as the plastic surgeon would say.

Sales to date are about 29 million and it's difficult to argue with this pulling power. Yet success brings its own problems. You'd think that those involved in the world's best-selling car would be basking in glory, looking down from their pedestal upon envious engineers below. But no, because of the constant need to upgrade, advance and stay contemporary.

The production lifecycle of a car now averages seven years, with a facelift expected after four. No sooner has the car been launched than the project team for the next generation is finalising its plans.

You'd think 30 years at the top would obligethe degenerate motoring press to accept your brilliance? Think again.

Thankfully for motorists and motoring journalists alike, the market is constantly on the move, demanding more and more from manufacturers. Into this arena arrives Golf V, its quiver of impressive awards enough to ward off many who dare criticise: joint second in the European car of the year, and last month named What Car? magazine's car of the year, to name but two.

In terms of design, VW's pencil-chewers and clay-modellers were never going to get it right for everyone. A full makeover would offend loyal customers with no guarantees of winning favour with others, while a simple nose job would bring ridicule and scorn from competitors for a lack of originality.

We sympathise with the predicament. However, that doesn't mean we agree. So, we invoke that cheap and easy journalistic privilege to throw tomatoes from the cheap seats.

We feel that, five generations on, there's such a legion of loyal fans that VW could have been more radical and, provided it carried the Golf name, motorists would have gone for it.

To neglect the importance of image is folly. A recent British car magazine put the new Golf to the test, driving it the length of Britain. Sadly, wrote the journalist, for all his own positive views on the new car, nobody seemed to notice it was generation five rather than four, a bruise to the ego or anyone just parted with €20,000 or so. Who cares, cry the individuals. We beg to differ - but this debate is one for petrolheads to argue over into the small hours over a gallon of unleaded.

Away from aesthetics, the new Golf remains rock-solid in build quality. It passes the "door clunk" test with aplomb and there's little that seems cheap or tacky. The addition of indicator lights on the wing mirror gives the impression of a much larger saloon.

Inside that feeling of space continues with a larger cabin, apparently one of the deciding factors for the What Car? judges.

This extra spaciousness doesn't come at the cost of significant extra body width. In fact, dimensions differ only 50-60 mm at various junctures. Yet the sum of the increases seems greater than the individual parts. The boot, for example, now boasts an extra 20 litres of space - and 121 extra litres with the rear seats folded down.

The dash, sadly, is barren. As major competitors add more gadgetry and wizardry as standard, VW's stark utilitarian feel harks back to more functional times.

The new Golf deploys some strips of aluminium in the cabin to break up the sea of hard plastics, but it lacks the panache of some competitors and, unless you move up to a higher specification, it leaves an impression that you skimped slightly in your order, despite probably paying more than €25,000.

The extra metal also means extra weight, with provisional figures for our 1.9 TDi suggesting an increase of 191 kg unladen. This impacts upon performance.

Of the engine choices on offer, the Golf market here remains dominated by 1.4-litre engines. That's unfortunate, for by all accounts the 1.4-litre petrol option is lacking in oomph. The most entertaining and original engine is the 1.9 Tdi which powered our test car - if the last generation is anything to go by, it will be the choice of about 12 per cent of buyers. It should be more.

For dawdling around the city, 1.4-litres is enough to keep you moving, but if you nip down the country more than once a month, you'll find it lacking in punch.

However, our diesel was not without shortcomings. In an age where oil burners are acoustically on a par with petrol variants - or close - this VW block idled quite noisily and gave a deep, throaty grunt when asked to perform. It worked well and had the pulling power, courtesy of 250 Newton Metres of torque, to quickly inhale and leap past dawdling traffic.

Top speeds are slightly slower than before - in the 1.9-litre diesel down from 127 mph to 116 mph. The 0-62 mph time is now 11.3 seconds against 9.6 seconds.

Far more impressive are the fuel figures. They now average 53.3 mpg, up to some of its strongest rivals.

Being a Golf, of course, handling and response remain strong. Suspension has been completely revised, along with steering and damping, ensuring more fluent ride and control. Standard across the range is excellent electro-mechanical power steering with speed-dependent assistance to increase driving pleasure.

No doubt this best-seller will continue to appeal to the converted, and remain VW's comfort blanket. However, new generations of motorists in this segment are finding the gap between the Golf and the also-rans rapidly closing. When they weigh up the various price and option packages, one wonders if the Golf will remain an automatic choice.