Both the Volkswagen Golf and its performance variant, the GTI, entered their seventh generation with 2015 redesigns. The cars haven't exactly set sales records ablaze in the past, though a reduced starting price for the Golf, a win for the GTI in Cars.com's $30,000 Cheap Speed Challenge and a Top Safety Pick Plus award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety should at least spark some interest among car shoppers not already carrying a torch for the five-seat hatchbacks. Another selling point — for families with small children — should be the Golf's and GTI's accommodation of child-safety seats. Much like in 2012, when we tested the Golf R, the cars earned high marks in our tests. Check out the Car Seat Check below for more.
How many car seats fit in the second row? Two
What We Like
- Both the Golf and GTI have two sets of easy-to-use outboard Latch anchors, situated under plastic covers. There are two tether anchors midway down the seatbacks in the outboard positions, and directly behind the head restraint in the middle position.
- The infant seat installed easily and fit well in both cars, hanging over the edge of the seat just a bit and requiring the front passenger to move forward slightly, but leaving ample legroom.
- Our rear-facing convertible seat also installed with ease and fit well — even with the seat bolstering in the sporty GTI — and neither required the front passenger to move forward. The install also was simple in the forward-facing position, with user-friendly tether anchors.
What We Don't
- We had to raise the head restraint to get the high-back booster to sit flat in the GTI, and remove the restraint altogether in the Golf to fit the forward-facing convertible seat.
- The seat belt buckles are on stable bases and recessed into the bottom of the seat cushion, which will cause problems for younger children.
Grading Scale
A: Plenty of room for the car seat and the child; doesn't impact driver or front-passenger legroom. Easy to find and connect to Latch and tether anchors. No fit issues involving head restraint or seat contouring. Easy access to the third row.
B: Plenty of room. One fit or connection issue. Some problems accessing third row when available.
C: Marginal room. Two fit or connection issues. Difficult to access third row when available.
D: Insufficient room. Two or more fit or connection issues.
F: Does not fit or is unsafe.
About Cars.com's Car Seat Checks
Editors Jennifer Newman and Matt Schmitz are certified child safety seat installation technicians. Editor Jennifer Geiger is working on renewing her certification.
For the Car Seat Check, we use a Graco SnugRide Classic Connect 30 infant-safety seat, a Britax Marathon convertible seat and Graco TurboBooster seat. The front seats are adjusted for a 6-foot driver and a 5-foot-8 passenger. The three child seats are installed in the second row. The booster seat sits behind the driver's seat, and the infant and convertible seats are installed behind the front passenger seat.
We also install the forward-facing convertible in the second row's middle seat with the booster and infant seat in the outboard seats to see if three car seats will fit; a child sitting in the booster seat must be able to reach the seat belt buckle. If there's a third row, we install the booster seat and a forward-facing convertible. To learn more about how we conduct our Car Seat Checks, go here.
Parents should also remember that they can use the Latch system or a seat belt to install a car seat, and that Latch anchors have a weight limit of 65 pounds, including the weight of the child and the weight of the seat itself.
Cars.com photos by Evan Sears
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