It’s a sad day for Volkswagen Golf GTI purists and fanboys. The GTI — one of autodom’s quintessential hot hatches — will lose its two-door variant in the U.S. as the scandal-rocked automaker jettisons low-volume offerings.
A very familiar face and name broke the story at Jalopnik after a Volkswagen product manager mentioned the cancellation during the company’s Golf Alltrack media test drive.
When Mark Baruth (a.k.a. Bark M) asked about pricing on 2017 GTI two-doors, Megan Garbis, Golf product manager at Volkswagen of America, stated that production of that model would end in two weeks.
That leaves a very short 2017 model year run for the two-door GTI. While we don’t have sales figures for specific GTI variants, overall sales of the model reached a high point in the U.S. last year. Increased demand apparently didn’t translate into more sales of the two-door model.
Garbis said that customers and dealers overwhelmingly ask for the four-door GTI. The automaker’s new U.S. strategy is to give customers what they demand most (and not a thing more, it would seem), so the two-door, as traditional as it is, needs to exit stage left. The order process for a four-door GTI has reportedly been streamlined.
“We’ve reduced the complexity, which allows the customer to configure the GTI he or she wants online and go to the dealership and pick it up today,” Garbis said.
With crossovers overtaking family sedans in sales and two-door coupes slowly disappearing from the automotive landscape, it seems practicality truly rules the day.
