New car news

07 September 2008 - 08:00

Golf on the green

We've spent the last couple of hours getting all excited - OK, not actually excited... understatedly impressed, maybe - by the stats on Volvo's eco-efficient new DRIVe range.

But this blows them out the metaphorical green water.

This is the new Golf Bluemotion, the greened-up version of VW's sixth-gen hatchback with the standard skinny tyres, long gearing and aero trickery. You know how it all works by now.

But jeez, does it work. You want numbers? How about 74mpg and 99g/km of CO2? Yes, that's as efficient and clean as the current Polo Bluemotion, already one of the greenest cars on sale in the UK. That's a free tax disc.

Despite such frugality, the Golf's 1.6-litre common-rail turbodiesel will still reach 60mph in a reasonably respectably 11.3 seconds, putting out 104bhp and 184lb ft of torque in the process.

The bad news? There's always bad news. VW is calling the Bluemotion Golf a concept at the moment, which means production could still be some way off.

However, we can't imagine they'd announce such impressive figures for a concept and then scale them down (or up, depending on which way you're looking at it) on the production version.

You wouldn't do that to us, would you, VW? Would you?