While we knew that the all-new Volkswagen Golf would not be headed to the United States next year, we were still confident in our own imported hatchback security — because Volkswagen Canada assured us that the new Golf would be coming here. Except that now it won't be, sliced like our summer plans, thanks to the pandemic. At least that's the case for the model most buyers would be putting in their driveways.
A Volkswagen Canada spokesperson confirmed the news to autoTRADER.ca, saying that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, "all projects have been reevaluated and the financial case for the Golf TSI for Canada only no longer works." They said that VW Canada will still work to get the eighth-generation Golf TSI — that's the base model, currently offered with a 1.4L turbocharged four-cylinder in Comfortline and Highline trims — to market in Canada, but that for the time being it has a faint hope at best.
That doesn't mean the death of all Golfs in Canada and the U.S., though, and there is a Clark Plaid lining in this dark cloud: the eighth-generation version of the Golf will arrive in GTI and R variants late next year.
So right now you can still get Golf, GTI, and R models as 2020s. For 2021, you'll get the current Golf and the Golf GTI. Then for 2022, you'll find only the all-new versions of the GTI and Golf R at your Volkswagen dealer. We'll add this to the list of reasons we'd like a mulligan on 2020.
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