This year, VW offers the convertible Eos. The car gave superb attention to detail and to the structure. VW is proud of the fact that it has been able to fit a shorter, more upright windscreen, due to the car's excellent rigidity.
The car is shake-free and with a refined VW muffler. As a result, the ride is supple unless you hit a deep pothole. The handling is taut and composed, and has good steering. Due to fine insulation, the VW is made a great cruiser.
The Golf GTI-sourced 2.0-litre turbo is one of the popular engine choices for Eos. It gives pace, effortless grunt and crisp. By using this engine, the gearshift action is good too.
Volkswagen partly patterned Eos’ styling from the Golf and the Jetta. A huge difference is that the Eos has a unique design of headlights. However, it borrowed the chrome grille from the Jetta. As a result, Eos does not look out of place alongside Audi's desirable A4 Cabriolet, considering it shares a platform with the humble hatch, albeit lengthened, with a wider track, and redeveloped with components including Passat rear suspension.
As the first-ever VW folding hard-top, Eos has a five-piece folding roof and has been dubbed by VW a 'CSC', which stands for “coupe sunroof convertible”. That is basically because the front glass section of the amazing roof can be slid back to open up the elements, though there is some cabin bluster. The car is offered with a choice of four petrol engines and one diesel, plus two trims - standard or Sport.
The Eos competes with the Vauxhall Astra TwinTop, Ford Focus CC, Volvo C70, Renault Megane CC and the Peugeot 307 CC.
The roof takes 25 seconds to fold away. It is operated by a chrome lever behind the handbrake. Sacrificing some luggage space is a big “NO”. It drops from 380 liters to 205 liters. Also, there's no facility to raise the roof within the boot when folded, to aid luggage access. The roof, however, which contains 470 components, is amazingly well packaged, allows a lot of light to get in the car and is fast to rise when rain clouds gather.
Found in the interior are seats for four, with spacious knee clearance for those in the back, and an appealing cabin design. It is broadly Golf based, but a few individual touches set it apart. Seats and driving position are great too. Even better, running costs will be low; all variants are economical, inexpensive to service whether you choose fixed or variable intervals and retain a high proportion of their list price. The VW is, however, notably more expensive than key competitors, and the overall package is spoilt slightly by a mean one-year breakdown recovery deal.
