2019 Volkswagen GTI Is A Top Safety Pick
The 2019 Volkswagen GTI, a small car, earns a Top Safety Pick award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety when equipped with optional front crash prevention and specific headlights. The GTI is the first model from Volkswagen to earn a 2019 safety award. The GTI earns good ratings in five crashworthiness evaluations and an acceptable rating in the passenger-side small overlap crash test. The GTI鈥檚 available front crash prevention system earns a superior rating. It avoided collisions in 12 mph and 25 mph track tests and has a forward collision warning component that meets the criteria set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The small car earns an acceptable headlight rating for the LED headlights that come with the SE, Rabbit Edition and Autobahn trims. The Autobahn trim also features high-beam assist, a system that automatically switches between high beams and low beams, depending on the presence of other vehicles. The GTI鈥檚 base halogen reflector headlights earn a poor rating because they provided inadequate visibility in multiple test scenarios.
If you're into numbers, the up! 139.4 inches long, 64.6 inches wide, and 58.6 inches tall. The Golf GTI checks in at 167.5, 70.8, and 57.2, respectively. The GTI, then, is the range-topping version of Volkswagen's entry-level model. We've been here before. In Germany, its home market, the up! 19,500 at the current conversion rate. To add context, the entry-level up! GTI looks the part. By that, we mean that it takes a well-trained eye to tell it apart from the tamer model it's based on. Those in the know will identify it right away: it wears a deeper front bumper, GTI-specific side skirts, a small spoiler that extends its roof line, and 17-inch alloy wheels wrapped by low-profile tires. Red accents create a visual link between the up! GTI family. But, all told, it's low-key, and that's how GTIs have always been. It's less low-key inside; again, that's how the GTI deities ordered it.
Volkswagen added sport seats with integrated headrests for the front passengers, tartan cloth upholstery, and red contrast stitching on a number of parts, including the steering wheel. There is no touch screen for the infotainment system. Instead, drivers need to use a plastic mount tacked onto the dashboard to hold up a smartphone, and rely on the app of their choice to get navigation directions. It's a solution that's common and normally acceptable in the up! GTI, whose base price approaches a Golf's, to come standard with a higher degree of connectivity. The materials found inside feel adequate. They're not great, and it doesn't take much poking around to find cheapness, but that's part for the course in this corner of the automotive kingdom. While we wouldn't put the up! We'd leave the rear seats to smaller occupants, though. Trunk space checks in at about 8.8 cubic feet with four passengers, which is an impressive figure for the category. The triple starts up with a little growl that's artificial; Volkswagen fitted the up! It sounds good, but we wish it was genuine, a little bit raspier, and a few decibels louder.
Before we move the shift lever into first gear, the light clutch pedal reminds us that we're behind the wheel of a car designed primarily for big, crowded cities. 2,500-rpm mark. After that, and up until its 6,000-rpm redline, the responsive 1.0-liter eagerly keeps up with the pace set by the driver, whether you're downshifting into a turn or accelerating out of one. It never feels like it's out of breath, and it's a marvel of an engine if you keep it in the upper half of its rev range. Your author has criticized three-cylinder engines in the past because they're often unrefined, and they tend to feel like less than the sum of their parts. This is one of the better exceptions, especially when dropped between the fenders of a car that weighs just 2,200 pounds. The sprint from zero to 60 mph takes about 8.8 seconds, so the up! GTI is not a lightning-quick car that pins your spine against the seat's foam.
