Motoring

The new VW Scirocco
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Volkswagen Scirocco is some mean Coupe

By Maurice Hardy
August 11, 2009

If you have something of a miserly reputation from which you want to break free, here’s a piece of advice.

Rather than be Scrooge- like and wait until Christmas to break free of your chains do it now in a display of self indulgence. Everyone who knows you will think the world has stood on its head.

The way to do it is to buy a Volkswagen Scirocco, an extremely stylish coupe that will reveal a whole new you. But, to ease the pain of your new lifestyle, the good news is that diesel will still give 55 mpg.

There are many other reasons to love this car than merely its frugality though, particularly that the 138 bhp, 2.0 turbodiesel makes this car very enjoyable to drive. It will never disappoint you.

It’s also refreshing that VW only charges a premium of £705 for the diesel over the cheapest Scirocco, the 1.4 TSI petrol, so the diesel is the bargain of the range to my mind. Much of that small premium will return at resale and the rest will be covered by better running costs, a situation not applying to many diesels because the premium is so much higher.

One of the problems the Scirocco faces is that you can buy a five door Golf GTI TD for the £19,815 you pay for a three door Scirocco while a three door Golf GTI TD is only £19,230. I have seen some reviewers suggest that the Scirocco is therefore a waste of money but that surely misses the whole point of the car.

I also thought when the car first came out last summer with only one high spec model that I didn’t want to drive (the diesel’s arrival this year immediately made it appeal, though) that the car looked too much like the Kia C’eed three door. That’s certainly the impression I gained from looking at some of the Scirocco pictures.

But see it in the metal and its form will win you over. If you hanker after a coupe, and there are precious few cars around that truly fit the description, then the Scirocco must be at the top of your list, or very near it.

There are only two hard colours for the Scirocco, red or white, and for any other hue you have to stump up £395 for metallic paint. The Rising Blue metallic of the test car looked very appealing but I have to say this is a car that would look great in white, especially if you spent a few extra quid on having the more heavily tinted rear side glass that’s an option on non-GT models.

A big shame is that the car doesn’t bring a pillar-less body as I always like them in a coupe. It’s true that they can compromise body stiffness but with such a stylish car I think it’s worth the effort.

As a person with practical leanings (they do not extend to DIY, though, as I have just given away my power drill) I much prefer estate cars to anything else but this Scirocco is sensible enough, despite its sporting ambitions, to win me over.

The back panel is home to a tailgate of decent proportions while the boot, too, can swallow a fair amount of gear. I’m not suggesting that it’s the type of thing for a trip to IKEA but then again my life is not consumed by the need to hump heavy flat packs around so I don’t really care.

If two of you are off for a weekend away, or even a week or two, the Scirocco would probably manage to carry all that you need. The luggage capacity is 312 litres as a four seater and although VW doesn’t quote a higher amount for when the seats are folded the fact that they do (with a 50/50 split) means you could be fairly liberal with your packing.

While the diesel may not quite deliver on the “exhilaration at your fingertips” line in VW’s Scirocco brochure, it does promise plenty of opportunity to “run from the mundane” and “escape the ordinary”. And that, let’s face it, is what these cars are all about.