Dusseldorf The Golf is no longer the best-selling car in Europe. This is shown by figures from the consulting firm Jato. Accordingly, new registrations for the popular VW model 2022 fell by 14 percent – to 177,203.
In the statistics, the Golf only ranks fifth, behind models such as the Fiat 500 and the Dacia Sandero. For golf, it’s the worst placement in decades. The new leader is Peugeot’s small car 208 with 206,000 registrations.
Recently, the VW model has been weakening every month. It is a rarity that the Golf loses its top spot over the course of a year. According to the Jato evaluation, this has only happened twice in the past 32 years, most recently in 2007. Back then, too, the winner was Peugeot.
A major reason for the decline in Golf sales is the shortage of semiconductors and other components. In 2022, this ensured that Germany’s carmakers installed the rare chips primarily in high-margin models and less in compact cars like the Golf.
“However, we assume that the supply of parts will be more stable over the course of the year,” explains a VW spokesman on request. According to the company, the order backlog for the Golf family is currently more than 100,000 vehicles.
VW is increasingly competing with itself
What the approval ranking also shows: VW is increasingly competing with itself. According to Jato, the compact off-road vehicle T-Roc is ahead of the Golf for the first time. Other SUVs and CUVs such as the Tucson from Hyundai or the Duster from Dacia were also able to gain sales compared to the previous year.
In addition, the ID.4 and ID.3 electric models are gaining market share in Europe – albeit at a low level: the ID.4 had 68,000 registered vehicles in Europe in 2022, and the ID.3 53,000. “Times are changing, and today consumers’ priorities are very different than they were a few years ago,” says Felipe Munoz, car expert at Jato, commenting on the development.
Car expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer goes one step further, he says: “The heyday of the VW Golf is coming to an end, just as it was with the Beetle.” It is less the electric cars that are displacing the Golf, “but completely conventional ones Compact cars and compact SUVs.”
According to Dudenhöffer, the price plays an important role. According to the VW website, the Golf costs 29,000 euros in its cheapest configuration. VW’s T-Roc is 24,345 euros. The Peugeot 208, Europe’s new bestseller, is available for 22,500 euros.
Maues car year for Europe
Europe’s new car market has declined for the third year in a row. According to Jato, the number of new registrations in 2022 fell by 4.1 percent to 11.3 million units. In the pandemic year 2020 there were almost 12 million registrations, in 2021 a little less.
The Golf is important for VW, especially as a product icon. In peak years, the group sold more than 300,000 units of the model in Germany, for the “Generation Golf” the car is closely linked to their own biography.
In Wolfsburg, the model also counts as a job guarantor for many plants – even if a lack of chips, pandemics and short-time work have recently repeatedly caused standstills on the assembly lines. This also meant that the Golf in VW country Germany was recently weakening and in 2022 there were only 84,000 new registrations.
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The Golf is now in its eighth model generation. However, customers and specialist media complained about problems with the software and the processing. From 2033, VW no longer wants to sell cars with internal combustion engines in Europe. The group therefore wants to electrify the Golf in the coming years.
“We’re working on it,” said VW CEO Oliver Blume recently in an interview with the Handelsblatt. According to everything that has been heard, the car should be sorted into the electric ID series and bear the name ID.Golf. However, it will likely take a few more years before that happens. A decision cannot be expected before 2025, according to VW circles.
In the future, there would be no reason not to offer the Golf with electric and combustion engines in parallel, said CEO Blume. Then the classic Golf has another internal competitor.
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