news

New Volkswagen Golf delayed until 2021

The coronavirus crisis has slammed the brakes on the Australian showroom arrival of the new generation Volkswagen Golf.


The new VW Golf 8 was due in Australia in late 2020 – about a year after it went on sale in Europe – however Drive has been told the COVID-19 lockdowns and temporary factory shutdowns have pushed back the local introduction until early 2021.

The good news is that the new VW Golf 8 will likely now launch with an almost complete model range, including numerous variants of the hatch and wagon (the latter caught on camera for the first time, here).

The VW Golf GTI performance icon (pictured below) is also expected to bow at the same time as the rest of the range, however the flagship VW Golf R hatch and wagon are not due until the second half of 2021. 

 

Drive

Official launch timing for the new VW Golf 8 range in Australia is yet to be confirmed, however as Drive has reported previously, a number of models are expected to carry over the engines from the current line-up.

Australia’s lower quality fuel has made it prohibitively expensive for Volkswagen and other car makers to adapt their latest generation engines to the unleaded petrol pumped at our bowsers.

In Europe, premium unleaded is capped at 10 parts per million of sulphur. In Australia 95 and 98 octane unleaded is allowed to have up to 50ppm of sulphur; regular 91 octane unleaded is allowed to have up to 150ppm.

The Australian petroleum industry, however, says unleaded at the bowser is often well below the maximum sulphur levels because 10ppm fuel is occasionally mixed in with other blends when bought on the international market at distress prices. When this occurs, the petroleum industry says, premium unleaded at the bowser can have 20 to 30ppm sulphur levels.

 

Drive

In the meantime, Volkswagen Australia says it has good supply across the current generation Golf range so that it won't fall short while waiting for the new model.

The April 2020 new-car sales slowdown is likely to help spread out stock levels of the current VW Golf range through to the end of this year and into early 2021.

Joshua Dowling

Joshua Dowling has been a motoring journalist for more than 20 years, spending most of that time working for The Sydney Morning Herald (as motoring editor and one of the early members of the Drive team) and News Corp Australia. He joined CarAdvice / Drive in 2018, and has been a World Car of the Year judge for more than 10 years.

Read more about Joshua DowlingLinkIcon
Chat with us!







Chat with Agent