Volkswagen models

Volkswagen means 'the people's car,' and that is exactly what it was set up to build in 1937. The original Beetle, designed to be cheap, simple, and mass-produced, went on to become one of the best-selling cars ever made and the foundation of a company now headquartered in Wolfsburg.

Volkswagen's genius has been making mainstream cars feel a notch more solid and grown-up than their price. The Golf, launched in 1974, set the template for the modern hatchback and has stayed a benchmark across eight generations. The brand sits at the centre of a giant group that also owns Audi, Porsche, Skoda, and others, sharing engineering across all of them.

The company's reputation took a real hit from the 2015 diesel-emissions scandal, and it responded by betting heavily on electric cars with its ID models. For buyers, Volkswagen still occupies a distinctive middle ground: not a budget brand, not a luxury one, but a maker of well-built, sensible cars that feel a class above where they actually sit.