Volkwagen: Swiss record holder
EIGHT GENERATIONS The Golf, the most successful car in Europe, will be 50 years old in March. The success story has been running for eight model generations and has sold more than 37 million units worldwide to date.
The VW Golf also has a long history of success in Switzerland. It was launched at the beginning of July 1974 and since then the compact car has been number 1 in Switzerland a total of 41 times. No other model has ever achieved this. At the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg, where the Beetle with its air-cooled rear engine had dominated the scene for decades, 1974 marked the beginning of a new era with a transverse front-mounted engine and front-wheel drive. Designed by Italian Giorgio Giugiaro and the Volkswagen design team, the Golf I was to continue the success story as the successor to the Beetle, of which more than 21.5 million were built. This worked, as the sale of the one millionth Golf was celebrated in October 1976.
Years of sales records
The first Golf models were equipped with 50 and 70 hp four-cylinder engines. After six months, 3875 vehicles were on Swiss roads. Sales figures rose steadily until the record year of 1979, when 22,140 Golf models were sold in Switzerland. With slight fluctuations, this sales success continued for decades. Only in recent years has demand shifted towards the new SUV models. Nevertheless, the Golf is still one of the most popular models in the VW range. By the end of December 2023, 676,385 units had been sold in Switzerland.
Generation VIII facelift
In its anniversary year, Volkswagen is now presenting the evolutionary stage of the eighth Golf generation (gallery), which features visual refinements, new assistance systems and drives as well as next-generation infotainment and software. The new plug-in hybrid drive is particularly efficient and enables an electric range of up to 100 kilometers. The advanced hardware and software is based on the fourth-generation modular infotainment platform (MIB4). Pre-sales will start in just a few weeks, and the latest evolutionary stage of the Golf will be on Swiss roads from the summer.
