Volkswagen Actually Listened! Physical Buttons Are Back on the Golf Mk 8.5

The Golf Mk 8.5 is bringing back physical buttons to the steering wheel and we couldn’t be happier!

Not too long ago we wrote an article titled, Volkswagen, Bring Back the Buttons!, and in it we lamented the fact that Volkswagen was removing physical buttons for touchscreens.

While the steering buttons were not 100% what we were talking about, the Golf Mk 8.5 ditches the touch-sensitive haptic buttons on the steering wheel with actual physical buttons.

This writer has driven a Tiguan R-Line with the aforementioned haptic buttons and we can confirm that it was, indeed, a nightmare to use.

The volume buttons wouldn’t respond to inputs and navigating the infotainment menu was a terrible experience.

Nearly 5 years after the Golf Mk 8 launched, the Golf Mk 8.5 will also return with an updated infotainment system in the form of a giant floating touchscreen.

Sadly, climate control buttons have been subsumed into the touchscreen and need to be controlled with touch sliders. Luckily, the touch sliders that are used to control the temperature are illuminated to make it easier to find at night and have been tuned to respond better to the touch.

The updated comes in time with the Golf turning 50 this year and rumour has it, this Golf may be the last one with an ICE option.

We recently reported that the new Golf GTI would come with Chat GPT so it seems like you have take some bad with the good.