Volkswagen Golf (left-hand drive) Euro NCAP front and side impact rating

The Golf 's structure is very sound, protecting its occupants from serious injury. It provides well-balanced protection between frontal and side impact. One of the child restraints is based on a new system fixing system and it proved to give very good performance, but there are some questions over the ease of correct fitting. The pedestrian protection though is rather unbalanced which protects heads but not legs and this needs attention from the designers.

Frontal Impact
The driver's door was almost undamaged giving support to the door aperture and keeping the body shell structurally stable. The driver's airbag worked well providing stable contact for the head. Protection of the passenger's chest was not as good as for the driver's and so the passenger's readings have been used in the assessment. Attention has been paid to the knee contact area, with the fitting of a composite metal and foam pad inside the steering column shroud. This should prevent concentrated loading on the knees but was not capable of preventing high loads being transmitted to the upper legs in all circumstances.

Side Impact
The car structure performed well with the door intrusion profile approximately vertical. The chest contacted the airbag which was supported by the pillar and the back of the door. Protection for abdomen was adequate and that for the pelvis was good. The head had a light contact with the central door pillar and seat belt loop. The door pillar trim cover contained energy absorbing padding which should help to protect the head, if the contact were more severe.

Child Restraints
The Golf was fitted with one conventional and one ISOFIX type child restraint. ISOFIX is designed to provide a more rigid support for the child restraint. Some problems were experienced with these pre-production ISOFIX restraints. The mountings were difficult to engage correctly and the indicator misleading. The car's rear seat belts had automatic locking provision for use with conventional child restraints. However, there was no instruction label on the belt, so this feature was not used.

Pedestrian Protection
Head protection for both children and adult pedestrians was found to be better than average. However leg protection has clearly not been addressed by the designers and was poor at all the test sites on the bumper and bonnet leading edge.