QOTD: Are Car Enthusiasts Ahead of or Behind the Market?

by Mark Stevenson

Published: May 6th, 2015

qotd are car enthusiasts ahead of or behind the market

The latest sales numbers from April are a tale of two cars: one with a bodystyle we praise and another sporting a shape we denounce without impunity – the VW Golf SportWagen and Porsche Macan.

The long-roof Golf took nine days on average to find a buyer. The Macan is at 11 days.

Brown manual diesel all-wheel drive wagon it is not, yet the SportWagen does check most of the boxes typically associated with the practical car enthusiast set. You get space without having to pay the drag penalty associated with SUVs and their large frontal area. Also, for those looking for some performance, nothing delivers torque like diesel (unless you go electric, which is a discussion for another day).

Which brings us to the Macan. Granted, the smaller Porsche-UV is exceptionally good, even if you do lose out on a considerable amount of cargo space compared to its platform mate, the Audi Q5. But, the Macan is still the antithesis of typical car enthusiast thinking: a high-riding utility vehicle that can’t go off-road sporting a badge from a “sportscar” company when, in fact, it has virtually nothing in common with the rest of the range. It’s also expensive, equipped horribly on the lower end of the price scale, and about as ‘aspirational’ as one can get.

So, that begs the question: are car enthusiasts ahead of the curve or behind it? Is the Golf SportWagen a case of the rest of the market finally “getting it” or just an odd blip in a typically silver SUV-filled market?

#Crossover #Enthusiasts #Golf #Macan #Porsche #QuestionOfTheDay #Sportwagen #SUV #Volkswagen #VW #Wagon

Mark Stevenson

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4 of 113 comments

Carguy on May 06, 2015

Neither. Car enthusiast priorities are just different from the mainstream market. They don't so much care about soft touch plastics, cup holders and rear leg room as the experience of driving the car. They are also a minority so let's hope there are enough of us to continue to justify making mainstream performance cars.

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Delta88 on May 06, 2015

The GSW S is not nearly the penalty box you may imagine it to be. Also, it has 16" wheels standard, not 15s.

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- Kyree on May 06, 2015
  
  This is true. It's quite improved over the Jetta SportWagen, whose base gasoline model had a less-fuel-efficient engine, lacked any sort of power-assisted seat, forewent leatherette in favor of cloth, and didn't have alloy rims. And even then, if the Jetta SportWagen S skimped on features, you could still tell it was a well-built vehicle, with higher materials quality than, say, the Jetta S. The Golf SportWagen TSI S comes standard with a lot of the stuff that was missing on the Jetta SportWagen S.
  
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- Variant on May 06, 2015
  
  True, it's not a penalty box at all, but the 2015 GSW TSI S comes with 15" alloys. I rather like my poverty spec 2014 JSW 2.5 S and it has 16" steelies with plastic wheelcovers. I'd prefer the smaller alloys if I could. My lease is up in April 2017 and I've already told my dealer I want an AWD 1.8T GSW, and if they could fit the 6 speed or DSG in there, even better.
  
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