It is easier to forgive an enemy than a friend. We understand if the inclusion of the Volks­wagen Golf in this year’s 10Best, its 10th in a row, causes surprise, incredulity, or even the sort of sputtering indignation normally only displayed by raging lieutenants in buddy-cop movies. We fully acknowledge that this is a controversial decision and the mailroom is on standby and all vacation for our Backfires team has been canceled. But it is nevertheless the right one.

This has not been a good year for Volks­wagen, any more than it has been for peace in the Middle East. We now know that Clean ­Diesel was, like David Hasselhoff’s music career, a cruel German joke. The emissions-cheating TDI engine scandal will haunt the brand for years and will almost certainly cost VW many billions in restitution. Affected owners have lost more than the mileage and per­form­ance the eventual fix will likely cost; they’ve also misplaced the moral superiority that came from being part of the solution. As smog goes up, smugness falls.

Assembly Plant: Puebla, Mexico*

Other Models: Beetle, Jetta

*Golf R is assembled in Wolfsburg, Germany.

But we still love the Golf, dammit. The gasoline-powered derivatives are fully deserving of their place on our altar of greatness. As Volkswagen makes the Golf, so the Golf makes Volkswagen. This supremely engineered line of two- and four-door hatchbacks remains the crown jewel of the modular MQB architecture that underpins the group’s global volume. By our reckoning, no fewer than 21 distinct cars are built from this supremely versatile “matrix,” sold around the world wearing Audi, Škoda, and SEAT badges as well as VW roundels. But none of these is better than the Golf.

“Rarely reveals that it’s front-wheel drive.” –D. Sherman

It’s a true world car, one that raises the average by the simple math of its popularity and excellence. And the very ubiquity of the platform it sits on is critical to its success. This is what happens when you can spread billions in development costs across millions of sales. Unlike many Volkswagens of old—and some of today—the Golf works as well in the U.S. as it does anywhere else, as happy in Waco or Wilmington as it is back home in Wolfsburg.

Much as we love the higher reaches of the range, it’s the basic Golf hatch that remains the best example of the benefits wrought from this globalized platform. There are bigger cars for the money, and faster ones, too. But none that comes close to the Golf’s relentless Teutonic precision. It is assembled to a standard that makes some luxury cars feel shoddy. The biggest weakness of its base engine, a 170-hp 1.8-liter turbo four, is that it is not the GTI’s 2.0-liter turbo four.

View Photos The Vending Machine: At VW's Autostadt, this car tower stores up to 400 vehicles fresh from the Wolfsburg, Germany, factory and fetches them for waiting customers. JOHN WYCHERLEY, MICHAEL SIMARI, THE MANUFACTURER

The German love of hierarchy holds true as you ascend the range, each slightly more expensive variant offering enough extras to ­justify the price step. The GTI combines the base Golf’s impressive comfort and quality with the sharpness of a true sporting machine. If you spend $1495 more for the Performance package, you might not be able to feel the difference in its 220 horses over the stock 210, but you will notice the extra traction delivered by the electronically controlled limited-slip differential. Before you know it, you’ll be trying to marshal the funds to purchase the $36,470 Golf R, with 292 horsepower, four-wheel drive, and supercar-baiting real-world abilities.

For all the comedic charm of nouns like Schadenfreude, Flugplatz, and—of course—Ausfahrt, German is not the most poetic of languages. But, for us, Modularer Querbaukasten (modular transverse matrix, or MQB in VW-speak) is poetry to rival Goethe’s. Some aspects may have been untrue, but on the whole, it’s still beautiful.

How We’d Build It

The GTI delivers the best value of the Golf range. The S trim is the only one that includes the Clark Plaid seats, so that’s the obvious starting point. We’d gladly spend an extra $600 for a pair of rear doors, but we’ll skip the automatic transmission in favor of the six-speed manual. Adding $1495 to the bill for the Performance package would get us the electronically controlled differential and 10 more horsepower, and that’s where we’d stand pat, at $27,910.

JOHN WYCHERLEY, MICHAEL SIMARI, THE MANUFACTURER

Platformer

MQB was first used with the third-generation Audi A3 hatchback, introduced in Europe in 2012, and has since spread to underpin most of the VW Group’s compact and mid-size offerings. (The Jetta is a notable exception.) MQB is not a platform in the old sense, as the only hard and fast similarity is between the pedal box and the front axle line, allowing for a fully modular powertrain strategy. Volkswagen has said that MQB will last for several product cycles and up to 40 models will ultimately be built using it.

Current model breakdown:

Audi:

A3: 2-door hatch, 4-door hatch, 4-door sedan, convertible

TT: coupe, convertible

Seat:

Leon: 2-door hatch, 4-door hatch, wagon

Škoda:

Octavia: 4-door hatch, wagon

Superb: 4-door hatch, wagon

Volkswagen:

Golf: 2-door hatch, 4-door hatch, wagon

Golf Sportsvan: wagon

Passat (European market only): 4-door sedan, wagon

Tiguan: small SUV

Touran: minivan

2016 10Best Cars: Return to Overview

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