For the Volkswagen Owners Club of Great Britain, the season opener has always been Dubfreeze (Bugfreeze for those that are old enough to remember). Unfortunately, Dubfreeze doesn’t feature on the show calendar anymore. It was looking like we’d have to wait until Stanford Hall in May to get out-and-about.
Back in August, we popped along to one of our favourite VW shows, Tatton Park. In the run-up to the show, we didn’t know whether it would go ahead or not. Several other shows had pulled the plug late in the day, so we were pleased when the day arrived and we could head over to Cheshire for our first show as a club for 18 months.
As Tatton Park is a one day show, we were up bright and early on Sunday morning, arriving at the grounds for around 8:30 am. We were greeted on our stand by Rich in his Caddy who had beat us there. Soon after, Derek, Peter and Phil joined us in their Eos, e-Golf and T5 Caravelle.
Despite a bit of drizzle early on while we were setting up, the weather was reasonably kind to us. The show field was full of amazing cars as per usual, we really don’t envy the judges that have to pick the winners.
Our favourite cars included a gorgeous lime green Polo GTI, a super clean gold Mk1 Golf Cabriolet and it was great to see Keith Vipond’s military Beetle looking splendid and being looked after by its new owners.
Junior committee
Pop this date in your diary… 5th & 6th June 2021. We’re inviting all our members along to the inaugural Volkswagen Owners Club of Great Britain Drive-in Festival.
Yes, you read that right, we’re bringing you our very own VW Drive-in Festival. The start of 2021 and pretty much the entirety of 2020 hasn’t been kind to the VW show scene. We’ve already lost some great shows from our calendar. So when we were offered the opportunity to host our own event, we jumped at the chance. We’d already been talking to a promoter to talk about plans to celebrate our 70th anniversary in 2023, but a chance conversation opened up an opportunity to bring you a COVID safe VW Drive-in Festival.
The Drive-in Festival will be held on the weekend of 5th & 6th June 2021 at Market Harborough Showground. Throughout the weekend you can expect:
We’re planning this VW Drive-in Festival to be COVID safe right from the
Storm Dennis couldn’t keep us from paying our annual pilgrimage to DubFreeze, although it did throw a few obstacles in our way.
We set off early Sunday morning from Sheffield in the T-Cross that we had borrowed from VW. The roads in South Yorkshire were fine, the winds were not too blustery, nor was there much in the way of precipitation.
As we neared the County Showground in Staffordshire, and deviated from the main A roads, things started to worsen. We were heading through a small village just past Uttoxeter when the road we were travelling on stopped being a road, and turned into a river. Being in a village that we were unfamiliar with, we decided that we needed to turn around and not try to cross the torrent running across the road.
Despite Storm Dennis’ best efforts, we made it safely to the Showground to meet up with our Chairman, John Renshaw who was already in the hall, quite aptly in his T2 Katastrophenschutz Bus (Disaster Bus). John had reportedly managed to wade through some quite deep waters in his van!
This year, the organiser; Terry ball, had changed things around slightly and moved our stand down onto the lower floor,
So this is the T-Cross R-Line, 1 litre petrol, 115 ps, DSG. It’s the first time I have driven a DSG. And I quite like it.
I’m a bit of a fan of small cars. I’ve owned a few Polo’s and Lupo’s over the years, so when the opportunity arose to have a go in VWs smallest SUV, I was a little bit excited.
We currently own a VW Tiguan, so we’re quite familiar with VWs SUV range, but the T-Cross hadn’t been launched when we were car shopping.
The T-Cross is ever so slightly bigger than a VW Polo. Just 55mm longer and 97mm taller. Yet inside, it is more spacious. While we were car shopping, we tried a Polo, but we couldn’t fit our daughter in the backseat in her car seat. She fits in the back of the T-Cross just fine.
VW say that the compact SUV will accommodate up to five adults. They’d have to be a bit skinnier than me though!
The load space is variable and class leading. Thanks to a sliding back seat, capacity can be increased to 455 litres with the seats up… although that doesn’t leave much leg room in the back,
Rain seems to have been a bit of a feature on our show calendar this year, and our visit to VW Festival at Harewood House was no different.
For the Spring Bank Holiday weekend, we travelled over the Scottish border to Volksfling in Biggar.
We’ve been to this show a few times over the years, but it’s the first time in a long while that we visited the show as a club.
The rain held off for our second visit to Avoncroft Aircooled, a great show in the grounds of Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings.
Stanford Hall VW Show has been a long time favourite on our show calendar. The turnout of vehicles in the Concours d’Elegance is amazing, year after year.
The most successful European car, the Golf is celebrating its 45th Birthday.
On 29 March 1974, the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg officially started production of what would become its best-seller. Back then, nobody at Volkswagen had any idea that the successor to the legendary Beetle would end up selling more than 35 million units all over the world – and still selling to this day. In purely mathematical terms, a new Golf has been ordered somewhere in the world every 41 seconds, every day, without interruption, since the start of production (SOP) 45 years ago. That is an average of around 780,000 vehicles per year.
Ralf Brandstätter, Chief Operating Officer of Volkswagen: “The Golf is at the very heart of our brand. It stands for progress and technology like no other car. For example, the Golf made safety technology affordable for millions of people for the first time. Thanks to this, it made its mark on an entire generation.” Brandstätter went on to emphasise: “For seven generations, the Golf has made a contribution to the development of Volkswagen as a brand and as a group – into one of the most
January 2019 brought the 42ndannual What Car? Car of the Year Awards, and Volkswagen managed to take home a raft of awards.
The Polo triumphed in the Small Car of the Year category, fending off close competition from the Audi A1 and the Dacia Sandero. The judges commented “The Polo sets the standard for comfort, practicality and refinement in the small car class, while its frugal 1.0-litre petrol engine and strong resale values make it a good long-term buy, and Volkswagen has kept the pricing sensible. There are no weaknesses in its armour.”
Along with the Polo’s success, the T-Roc took a win in the Best Small SUV for more than £20,000 category. The judges said: “The T-Roc is a cracking small SUV. Its 1.5-litre petrol engine offers a strong turn of performance, and Design versions come loaded with kit. This is also one of the best-riding cars in this class, and it handles tidily too. That it costs a lot less than some rivals is just an added bonus.” The T-Roc was also named Small Car of the Year by Company Car and Van earlier this month, adding to an already successful 2019 awards collection.
The awards didn’t stop
Well the 2018 AGM has been and gone, if you didn’t make it to Coventry on the day, there’s always next year! All members are welcome, and we try to hold it somewhere of interest for the members.
This year, the club has stayed financially stable gaining a net increase of 50 members over last year.
The Committee has seen some big changes, with the departure of a number of long-standing committee members.
Today, the motoring press is alight with news of the production of the VW Beetle reaching a dead end.
It’s a sad day in the VW world, but one that isn’t surprising. Sales figures of the current Beetle are very disappointing. VW report that they have sold less than 1,000 Beetles (including cabriolets) so far this year in the UK*.
History has been made at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Volkswagen have powered to a new all-time record with the I.D. R Pikes Peak racing car.
Romain Dumas defeated a field including cars with conventional drivetrain technology and made history driving the 500-kW (680 PS) I.D. R Pikes Peak. Dumas not only broke the previous record for electric vehicles, but also smashed Sébastien Loeb’s previous record from 2013 – by a massive 16 seconds.
Volkswagen’s first fully-electric racing car has been designed to take on the most famous hill climb in the world; Pikes Peak.
On Sunday 13th May 2018, we popped along to Bromsgrove in rural Worcestershire, to the Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings.
Volkswagen has confirmed a technical issue has been identified on the new Polo (model year 2018). There is the possibility that in rare situations (e.g. sudden quick lane changes with five passengers on board) and when the rear center seat and the rear left seat are occupied at the same time, the left seat belt lock could be unintentionally released.
The new Touareg will be released onto the market packed with a range of innovations. The new Touareg is the first Volkswagen model available with the Night Vision assist system and the first to include an actively steering rear axle.
Security researchers at a Dutch cyber-security firm, Computest, have discovered that the in-vehicle infotainment system in the Golf GTE along with other models from the Volkswagen Group has a weakness that can be exploited over WiFi.
The two researchers that discovered the flaw, Daan Keuper and Thijs Alkemade, described how they have successfully tested their findings on a Golf GTE and an Audi A3 Sportback e-tron. They explained how they use the car’s WiFi connection to gain access to the Harman infotainment system via an exposed software component.
