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A Designer Buying a Car, Part 5: Volkswagen Golf Alltrack, Aesthetics and Practical Considerations
Volkswagen offers two types of AWD stickshift station wagons: The Golf SportWagen S with 4Motion, and the Golf Alltrack (in three trim levels). Both are identical except the Alltrack has a marginally higher ride height.
I narrowed it down to the Alltrack for a practical reason: The SportWagen S offers only cloth seats, whereas leatherette comes standard in the Alltrack (below). I own two dogs and am moving to a farm where the animals outnumber the humans by a factor of 50. I am going to get dirty. The interior of the car is going to get dirty. And cleaning cloth seats is a bitch.
Enter a caption (optional)For exterior automotive design I like clean, simple lines with a minimum of fuss. I don't like arbitrary bulges, flares and surface changes. With this criteria in mind, compared to the other two contenders, the Mini Clubman and the Subaru Forester, the Golf Alltrack is clearly the hands-down aesthetic winner.
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Enter a caption (optional)The Alltrack's designers used restraint and discipline. There are no extraneous lines nor, in the details, any meandering stylistic paths to nowhere. There are no chicanes, switchbacks or stupid Z-curves. This car looks, to me, like it was the subject of a rigorous design review led by a single individual with an authoritative sense of aesthetic simplicity.
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Enter a caption (optional)The interior is Teutonic, rational and no-nonsense.
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Image by Car & Driver The steering wheel does look a little complicated to this automotive Luddite--the steering wheel of the last car I owned featured only a horn--and I suspect I'll ignore its functionality altogether.
Enter a caption (optional)I double-checked that the car met all of my earlier requirements--high crash test ratings, quickness, reliability--then started the process of purchasing a 2018 Golf Alltrack.
For Research I Used:
- Car & Driver, my favorite of the car magazines. Of the majors, their sensibility aligns most with mine and their coverage is top-notch. I gleaned more useful information about the car and its trim levels on C&D than I found on Volkswagen's website.
- YouTube, where there are countless video reviews of any car you can think of. You do have to sift through them a bit, but the good ones you'll find are very informative.
- My own history. The last car I owned was a 2001 Volkswagen Golf, which I had from 2001 until 2005. Fantastic car, reliable, built at the same plant in Mexico where the Alltracks are now built.
How I Acquired One:
I was after the base trim level, the Alltrack S, because I don't need fancy features.
The first thing I learned is that stickshifts are hard to come by. Nobody wants them anymore, so it's a miracle VW still offers them. Local dealerships did not have a single stickshift Alltrack S in their inventories, and could not find one within a 500-mile radius of New York City.
One dealership eventually called back and said they found one they could have transported to New York. They quoted me roughly $28,000.
I then caught wind of a website called Autonation.com. After plugging in my search criteria, it instantly revealed four stickshift Alltracks around the country. None were in the S trim level I desired--yet all were priced lower than the estimate I got from the dealer in New York.
In the end, I contacted one of the dealerships through Autonation. Last week I signed the papers on an Alltrack SE which, even with the delivery charge and higher trim level, was far less than the other quote. I don't need a moonroof nor push-button engine starting but I'll take it. Sadly I couldn't get the interior/exterior colors that I wanted, but that's life.
At press time the car had been delivered to a local dealership, and I should be picking it up sometime this weekend. At some point I'll write an in-depth review.
Your Take on the Car Buying Process
Designers among you, what criteria do you employ when acquiring a car? Are you extra-picky about things like design and interior UX?
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Comments
Rain, I hope you like it. I've had my '17 SEL for a year now, and am very pleased with it. You will learn to appreciate the multifunction steering wheel, trust me.
I actually go to a dealership and evaluate the cars in person instead of relying on photos.
Its quite easy to disable. At least on my 04 gti, I popped out the headlight dial there was a pin that said "TFL", either put tape or bend the pin.
Paul - If you do a search, you'll find daylight running lights melting parts is an issue on a number of car makes out there.
As I understand it a number of mid 2000s European vehicles suffered from flaking off wire insulation after a few years due to some euro rules about making plastic biodegradable so possibly products such as soy and casein were used in the plastic. True or not I’m not sure but it seems to be a reasonable explanation for this sudden failure of wiring insulation. Petrochemicals rule in this application.
https://www.km77.com/coches/seat/leon/2015/x-perience/informacion This is the one you should've bought.. it's a pitty that Seat doesn't sell his wonderful stuff in USA.
First time I've heard of Seat cars-live in SE Aisa. How are they generally? After quickly checking their current youtube page video I'm assuming that they're targetting millenials.
Thank you. Really great series. Agree with the aesthetic of the chosen VW. Would you take it a step further and identify the top 10? It could flip the switch of the spotlight that the auto industry needs to have turned on to shine a light on better design. So little seems to have a congruent thought process. Start the revolution.
Great articles! Funny to see the choice of cars you made, on our shortlist two years ago when we bought a new car, was the Forester, the Clubman, the Golf Alltrack and the Skoda Yeti. It took us a long time to decide on a car, as both my wife and me are working within the design industry, so I guess we're more than average picky and conscious about design and brands. A lot of brands was out of question purely because of their communication and image, like BMW, Audi, Alfa Romeo, Mercedes and so on, so that left us with more or less the four cars to check out. Without going in too much detail, we ended up with the Subaru Forester. We have got two kids who plays ice hockey, so we needed a super practical car, and also live in Norway, where the roads are pretty bad and we have at least 6 months of winter. I completely agree on your design analysis of the Forester exterior. Lets be honest: It´s a mess. What won us over was actually driving it and living with for a few days. So much of the communication around cars and buying a car is focused on a lifestyle projection and the status beeing implied. There's not much talk about the real-world qualities of a car, not in communication and not in car journalism, who in general are too focused on tech spec and features. Test driving the four different cars in a real world situation, made it very clear what car to buy, even though it was a close call between the Forester and the Yeti (which, sadly is now discountinued...). You sit high, have a fantastic overview, its spacious and the suspension is so much better than VW, Mini and others. But that said, there's so much room for improvement on the Subaru! The interior works well, but the design and material choice is so uninspiring.
I signed up specifically to write this comment. Fantastic articles Rain, I feel like you put into words many of the decisions that I make by being a designer, but currently make almost surreptitiously which leads me struggling to verbalise and articulate those decisions. Taking a step back and looking at your everyday issue but applying a design logic to it so explicitly was a real eye opener for me. I'm going to be looking for a new car early next year and will try to apply a similar process, as well as other decisions I make that are informed by design thinking, to rationalise and help look inwards at the reasoning rather than being so autonomous. Thank you Rain.
As much as I agree with your practical and aesthetic analysis, there’s just no way my conscience would allow me to buy a Volkswagen after their fraudulent emissions debacle.
Good choice! I got as far as test driving one (in green!) but ultimately settled on the new Volvo XC40... which still hasn't come in yet. The thing that sold me was it'll fit in parking spaces 12 inches smaller 😂.
Similar process to me. Wanted the Subaru Outback but couldn’t get past the exterior. Obviously buffed up the design to fit in with the SUV look rather than a 4wd wagon. Started around 2010, here’s the 2009 version.