But what do you get if you want to test the most generic, most common and most… normal cars on UK roads? Well, it’s time for a glamorous hatchback vs crossover showdown – it’s Volkswagen Golf vs Nissan Qashqai.
Photography: Jonny Fleetwood
These are the cars that you recommend to a friend who’s starting a family and has zero interest in anything automotive. Previously, the VW Golf was the default choice in that regard, but when the MkVIII arrived in late 2019 it was immediately obvious that VW had dropped the ball.
Well, it was as soon as you tried to use the infotainment system. In 2023, VW’s own technical chief Kai Grünitz told Munich motor show attendees: “We won’t bring a car to the road again like the Golf 8 or ID.3 with thousands of problems.” Ouch.
With the newly facelifted Golf (launched to celebrate the car’s 50th birthday) the party line from the top brass at Volkswagen is “we listened”. Changes to the exterior styling are minimal – new bumpers, fresh light signatures and a light-up VW badge on the nose – but the inside gets crucial updates like illuminated touch sliders for the climate control, physical buttons on the steering wheel and a new MIB4 infotainment system. We’ll come back to that later.
Although in truth, it wasn’t just the touchscreen woes of the MkVIII Golf that saw it lose its divine right to recommendation. The march of the crossover had long been in full swing, and traditional hatches were being shunned in favour of taller, more image conscious small SUVs. The Qashqai was one of the originals, unveiled back in 2006, and since then Nissan has sold over four million of the things.
We’re now onto the third gen, which like the Golf was also facelifted earlier this year. It too received an infotainment overhaul, while Nissan’s exterior designers were a lot busier than VW’s – we’re told that giant new scaly grille is inspired by samurai armour. Can confirm that it’s a nightmare to clean.
If you really do just want to get from A to B and don’t care at all what gets you there, you can have an entry level Qashqai with a mild hybrid turbocharged four pot, a manual gearbox and Acenta Premium trim for £30,135. The car we have here is about as far removed from that spec as you can get. It’s in top of the tree Tekna+ trim and is powered by Nissan’s e-Power hybrid system that uses an electric motor to drive the front wheels and a 1.5-litre three-cylinder petrol engine to charge a 1.8kWh battery.
The engine never powers the wheels so it’s technically a range extender, but given how small the battery is you’ll only get around a mile of all-electric running before the little combustion powerplant kicks in. Still, you never need to plug it in, and Nissan claims 53.3mpg and 119g/km of CO2. We managed just 42mpg on a mixed run, but prior to that a full tank of E10 did bring up a claimed range of over 600 miles between fuel stops.
Impressive, although so it should be for £42,980. Fuji Sunset Red paint brings this test car up to £43,725. Yikes.
The Golf looks as though it should be much sportier. Prices for the entry level Life trim now kick off at a respectable £27,035, but this is the R-Line that’s so popular here in the UK thanks to its more aggressive styling, 17in wheels (although we’ve got optional 18s here) and sports seats, so you’re looking at a minimum of £30k with a 1.5-litre turbocharged four pot and a manual gearbox.
We have the same engine here but equipped with a 48V mild hybrid system and a seven-speed DSG. It should cost £31,875, but this one’s wearing over £8,000 of options including active suspension (£720), a sunroof (£1,220), LED matrix headlights (£1,825), Anemone Blue metallic paint (£730) and a Harmon Kardon sound system (£600). The actual Golf R probably won’t cost too much more when the updated car arrives in UK dealerships, and with 333bhp and a drift mode that’s far from normal.
Still, the mild hybrid assistance means the Golf’s powertrain is smooth and quiet on startup, although unlike the Nissan you don’t get any all-electric range and the auto gearbox is set up for maximum efficiency, so the performance hardly matches the looks. We’re talking 0–62mph in 8.4 seconds and sluggish gear changes. You do get small plastic paddles behind the wheel if you want to take over, but you’re unlikely to be manually changing the whole time.
You probably won’t stick with Sport mode either – this may look like a Golf R, but it certainly doesn’t sound like one and at higher revs the four pot sounds unnecessarily thrashy. Avoiding Sport, we saw 43.1mpg from the eTSI Golf – slightly better than the larger, heavier, more complex Qashqai.
The Nissan of course is driven by an electric motor, so you get instant torque and good responses off the line. That means it’s fairly nippy to drive in town and is quicker to 62mph than the Golf. Weren’t expecting that, were you? The Qashqai is designed, engineered and built in Britain, and it’s actually better to drive on our potted roads than you might imagine.
It’s heartening to know that this isn’t a ‘best of a bad bunch’ situation
There’s some steering feel (not a given in this class), the brakes are nicely weighted despite having to balance regen and pad-on-disc friction, the suspension is on the right side of firm and there’s not too much body roll if you push on down a country road.
Although when you do start to push on and increase the speed, there is a fair bit of audible resistance from the 3cyl engine as it revs itself silly to keep charge going into the battery. There are no gear changes because the system doesn’t require a gearbox. You can activate a Brake mode for extra regen or an e-Pedal mode for one-pedal driving, but because the battery is so small the engine will remain on for most of your journey. It’s a strange mix of EV and ICE driving experiences.
Jump into the Golf and, although it may be slightly slower, it at least feels and sounds as you’d expect. Normal, in other words. You also notice the weight difference. The Golf steers and stops with more urgency and its lower centre of gravity (plus the multi-link rear suspension that’s standard on everything except the 114bhp petrols) means it corners flat, resists understeer and rides remarkably well. You don’t need the expensive DCC option with its adaptive suspension.
And so, we come to the interiors. The Golf’s new infotainment system is a massive improvement on the pre-facelift car with a 12.9in touchscreen that boots up immediately. It’s much more responsive to your inputs and you can set up shortcuts along the top of the screen to quickly switch off annoying driver assist systems.
And yet it’s still not perfect. The integration of ChatGPT raises privacy and accuracy concerns, and there aren’t enough physical buttons in the cabin. The climate controls still require a trip into the screen unless you just want to change the temperature with the sliders, and at one point said screen refused to cooperate just after we’d set the aircon to its polar vortex setting. We only wanted a blast of cold air. It got very chilly, very quickly.
The Qashqai is much simpler. The 12.3in infotainment system now uses Google built-in, so you’ve got Google Maps as standard, Google Assistant to talk to and Google Play to download other apps. Nissan’s own graphics are a little dated, but farming everything else out to Google Automotive Services was a clever decision. As was retaining the separate climate control panel and the physical buttons on the centre console for things like drive modes.
This is an interior that you could get in and use straight away. If you bought the Golf, you’d need to spend hours on the driveway setting things up and reading the manual to learn how everything works. Here’s a handy tip: you can set up a ‘Custom’ mode so you can turn off the lane assist and speed limit warnings in a couple of button presses. That instantly switches off the otherwise incessant beeping and bonging.
This Tekna+ trim does bring an impressive level of spec to the Qashqai. You get a head-up display, a Bose sound system, genuine Alcantara trim, heated and massaging front seats with proper quilted leather and a glass roof that brightens up the rear. There’s plenty of space back there too, more so than in the VW, and the Golf’s manually adjustable sports seats are great for those sitting in the front, but they’re seriously chunky and block the view ahead for rear seat passengers.
The Golf also loses out when it comes to storage space with its boot a full 54 litres smaller than the Qashqai’s, although it should be easier to park given that it’s almost 200mm shorter in length.
It’s heartening to know that this isn’t a ‘best of a bad bunch’ situation, though. The latest Golf is excellent to drive and the Qashqai as an all-round package is better than you might expect. The Golf just edges this one, mostly because you could have one for a considerable amount less than a Qashqai if you avoid the pricey options, and we’re not sold on Nissan’s range extending e-Power drivetrain.
Still, it’s good to know that we can all go back to recommending the most ‘normal’ cars on sale.
