Blog Search Results

There's no doubt that, if fuel economy is your top priority and you're a high-mileage driver, then the BlueMotion version of the Golf is the car for you. The official combined consumption figure is 3.8 litres/100km (74.3mpg) and it gets pretty close to that. We're consistently amazed by its ability to avoid fill-ups, even when confined to the environs of Dublin. On the motorway it's peerless.

Though it's not quite peerless, as Volkswagen offers the same 1.6-litre TDI engine in the rest of the Golf range. Sure, you do without a list of further…

We've got hold of a Volkswagen Golf for a few months to live with it every day. In some ways it's a more realistic test of a car than our usual week-long loans. Paddy will be the 'owner' of the car most of the time, but I'll be getting behind the wheel regularly too to give a second opinion.

Our car is the BlueMotion model, which is the most fuel efficient Golf available. It's not difficult to spot some of the modifications made in the name of efficiency. It sits lower for a start…

We regularly bang on about winter tyres and their merits so we've put our money where our mouths are this year and fitted a set of Bridgestone winter rubber to all four wheels of the CompleteCar.ie Golf BlueMotion. It gave us an excuse to have the car cleaned again too. It's so easy to take one of the few permanent cars in the household for granted when there are so many shiny new models passing through our hands.

Have to admit that the clean has really brought up the paintwork and though the Golf…

When advising buyers what car to go for, one of the first things we ask them is how they'll use it. While Irish drivers are obsessed with diesel power at the moment, petrol cars can make sense depending on your circumstances, especially if you're going for a small car and you don't plan on astronomical annual mileages. Likewise, petrol-electric hybrids are suited more to a city life than one in which you pound the motorways.

So, where does our Golf BlueMotion fit in? Well, in truth, it's driven in and around Dublin city the…

Alright, I admit that winter tyres may not have been necessary as yet, though I did feel vilified in having them fitted to our long term test Golf when the temperature plummeted to zero in the middle of December. Then it decided to come back up to a balmier 14 degrees around Christmas Day...

Still, it's only the first week of January and many are predicting cold weather and snow for later this month.

However, I'm not as ready as I was, as one of the tyres suffered a puncture before the holidays. Annoyingly,…

While enthusiasts' desires are tempered a bit right now by economic reality, there are still some fabulous performance cars on the market. Irish buyers tend to veer toward hot hatches, as they're relatively affordable and practical despite giant-slaying performance. Once upon a time all hot hatches were comparable, but now there's a range of options, from the likes of the warm (but still great) Suzuki Swift Sport to the bonkers stuff like Ford's Focus RS and the new Audi RS 3.

Then there's the Volkswagen Golf R. It doesn't immediately stand out, despite the…

Having spent several months at the wheel of the Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion, and then with the Golf Edition-R, it's time to move on. Our next long term test car will be a SEAT Exeo, but before that arrives we have the recently updated Volkswagen Touran for a few weeks. You can read our full road test of the Touran here, and we're going to take this opportunity to compare it to living with a Golf. We suspect that's a decision some growing families will have to make.

First up, and despite cosmetic revisions at…

I'm in China for the week with Mercedes-Benz taking part in its F-Cell World Drive. That's the circumnavigation of the globe in a pair of fuel cell powered B-Class Mercs. We're aiming to drive about 1,000km through China. Should be quite an experience. A few 'postcards' from the journey to Beijing for you:

Alright, this could be from any trip we take, but spotted a (very) yellow Ferrari California up for grabs in one of those airport raffle competitions. First time I've seen the car in that colour.

It all happened by accident. I was supposed to collect the Seat Ibiza ST, a car which sounds like it has performance potential, but is really just a Seat Ibiza Estate, which Shane had driven before anyway. But when I showed up at Seat's Liffey Valley headquarters, the Ibiza had gone AWOL and the Leon 1.6 TDi was offered by way of a replacement.

It had been quite a while since I had driven a Leon. Probably because it is a long time…