Out of Africa

VOLKSWAGEN Australia’s small-car range is playing international musical chairs, as the next-generation Golf turns wholly German again while our Jetta jettisons Mexico.

Except for the German-built GTI three-door hatch and R32 flagship, all versions of the current, fifth-generation Golf come from South Africa.

The just-unveiled Golf VI will be built at Volkswagen’s head office site in Wolfsburg and arrives in Australia in the second quarter of 2009, following a Paris motor show world premiere in early October.

According to one Volkswagen insider, every Golf VI will be built “only in Germany and entirely in Germany”.

However, prices for the new car are still expected to shadow the existing Golf V, which kicks off at $25,490 for the base 1.6-litre petrol model, despite the swap from a cheap labour base to one of the most expensive in the world.

This is due to the fact that the Golf VI is believed to be significantly less expensive to build than the existing model.

Nevertheless, Volkswagen Group Australia general manager Jutta Dierks said it is still too early to comment on pricing and positioning for the next-generation Golf.



“It does have an effect on us because most of our Golfs come out of South Africa for the time being,” she said.

“We haven’t really finalised pricing yet, but actually it doesn’t really matter where it is produced because we buy it from Head Office and they deliver it from any production site. So it doesn’t really matter whether that comes from South Africa or Germany.”Volkswagen is also hesitant to divulge too many details for the next Golf, since the current car still has up to nine months left on sale in Australia.

“We are not in a hurry, to be honest, because the current Golf still sells very nicely. Because it is still far away, nobody is talking about the run-out of the (existing) Golf. We are talking about 48 per cent of our volume, so we must be very careful.

“We are very confident that it will be delivered (to us) with everything that we need.

“I don’t think just because it will be built in Germany it has to be more expensive (or even less expensive), because we have found a very effective way for it to be built.”On the other hand, Mrs Dierks does not believe that the market will necessarily respond to the next Golf more favourably just because it will be manufactured in Germany.

“The quality is always the same so it doesn’t really matter where it comes from,” she said.

Meanwhile, the South African assembly site that has supplied Australia with the Golf in Mark IV and V guises since 2001 has switched to making the current-generation Jetta, which is essentially a booted version of the existing hatch.

From late 2004 until this year, the Jetta has been manufactured only at Volkswagen’s Pueblo plant in Mexico.

It replaced the German-made, Golf IV-based Bora sedan, which sold below expectations almost everywhere except in the USA.

Speculation suggests that the Jetta has left Mexico to make way for another vehicle. This is likely to be the long-rumoured cheap small sedan that is reportedly based on the old Golf IV architecture.

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