When most people think of golf, usually the sport that has made Tiger Woods famous springs to mind, but for (world) car fans, it's the Volkswagen Golf that immediately pops up. That's how important the compact model is, not just for being a veritable cash cow for the VW Group, but also for becoming one of the most popular nameplates in the industry.
It has been around since 1974 and since then it has spawned a total of seven generations, thus making it one of the oldest models in the business. More than 35 million cars later, the Golf is now gearing up to embrace its eighth installment, which will officially hit the assembly line in 75 weeks from today. In other words, the Golf 8 will enter production towards the end of June 2019.
The big announcement was made by VW during the recent "Golf 8 Supplier Summit" organized at the Volkswagen Arena at home in Wolfsburg, Germany. No less 180 top managers of the most important VW suppliers from the components industry came together at the meeting to establish a plan for the next iteration of the compact model, which is being sold in a whopping 108 countries. The automaker wishes to point out that 80 percent of all suppliers for the next Golf are already under contract, so work is well underway.
To make it all happen, the VW Group is investing a total of €1.8 billion, which works out to about $2.2 billion at current exchange rates. The Wolfsburg factory - which is Europe's biggest car plant - will remain the most important one for the Golf output and it's the place where more than 2,000 cars from the expansive Golf family are produced on a daily basis.
A design sketch was shown at the Golf 8 Supplier Summit, but there's not much to see as it's only a somewhat generic outline of a tiny three-door version. It's too early to say how it's going to look like, but knowing VW and its appetite for evolutionary designs, we have a feeling the new Golf will bring a subtle revision to the winning recipe. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?
