What can be said about the Volkswagen Golf in the Guinness Book of Records?

A fun look at the 50-year-old legen piese auto online.

What can be said about the Volkswagen Golf in the Guinness Book of Records?

The Volkswagen Golf is directly linked to many important, interesting and fundamental processes and cultural events in the automotive world. A large number of market records are also associated with it, which can be illustrated with a few illustrative examples: with over 37 million units produced in more than 70 countries, the Golf is the most successful model in Volkswagen's history. If all Golfs ever produced from 1974 to the present day were lined up in a column, its length would be 136,900 kilometers (based on the length of the Golf I) - or about three and a half times the circumference of the equator.

With each successive generation, the Golf becomes more functional, more spacious, more innovative, but also a little bigger. A comparison between the first generation and the current model from 2026 shows that it is now 17.9 cm wider and a full 57.7 cm longer than its predecessor (in the two-door version).

The all-electric ID.7 Pro S, which is Volkswagen's current range champion, can travel 709 kilometers (WLTP cycle) on a single charge.

With its area of 6,500,000 square meters, the Wolfsburg plant is one of the largest vehicle production sites in the world.

Despite being a car manufacturer, Volkswagen strictly adheres to the most current environmental standards, and it is therefore no coincidence that more than 2,830 bicycles are used daily on the premises of the Wolfsburg plant.

The car body is held together by around 4,000 spot welds, 800 bolts and 600 adhesive joints – each of which is tested for strength as part of routine quality checks. The paint on a Golf consists of five layers – approximately the thickness of a sheet of paper.

And what about the GTI? “The GTI will not sell more than 500 units,” stated VW’s sales department when the Golf GTI debuted at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1975. That’s why the initial plan was for a maximum of 5,000 units, which turned out to be woefully insufficient. By the end of 2024, more than 2.5 million GTIs had been sold worldwide.

Few people know that since the year the first Golf debuted, Volkswagen has been offering its own brand of sausage, made from meat originally sourced from company-owned farms. In 2024, a record 8.5 million sausages were sold in restaurants and supermarkets. Since the sausage is branded as an original Volkswagen part (!), any licensed dealer can order the corresponding quantity through the official spare parts network under number 199 398 500 A. The sausage goes very well with spicy ketchup, which, by the way, is also made according to an original Volkswagen recipe.

In purely cultural terms, the Golf has long been immortalized in fiction. The second generation of the model inspired the famous German writer Florian Illies for his novel "Generation Golf", in which the main character wants to do everything differently from his father. One of the few common values they share is that they both drive Golfs.

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The Volkswagen Golf is directly linked to many important, interesting and fundamental processes and cultural events in the automotive world

With each successive generation, the Golf becomes more functional, more spacious, more innovative, but also a little bigger