It's abbreviation-ism gone completely demented. You can imagine somebody, in the appropriate surroundings of the 19th hole, propping up the bar, asking a fellow member what his new car is, and reeling back at the reply that it's a VW GT TDI PD DSG - that's PD, of course, for Volkswagen's patented Pumpe Düse diesel injection system, and DSG for the brilliant Direct Shift Gearbox.We reported a few months ago on the six-speed manual version of the GT TDI, in an article which now reads rather curiously, as we suggested that the Mark V Golf doesn't quite have the 21st-century looks of the Ford Focus - not knowing that what was then the still-secret 2005 Focus was about, in the opinion of many industry observers, to show a retreat back to 20th-century styling.Most of the other comments about that earlier Golf test car - concerning its handling, ride, space and so on - obviously apply to the current one, but the DSG transmission moves it into another dimension altogether.Volkswagen has applied for more than 70 patents connected with the DSG system, which first appeared last year in the Golf R32. The transmission factory at Kassel has already turned out more than 25,000 of these gearboxes for Golf and Touran models, with Audi, SEAT and Skoda accounting for another 35,000 or so.If you look at the performance (down a little), the economy (not quite so good) or the CO2 emissions (up a little), the DSG Golf might seem not such a good bet, especially as this six-speed automatic transmission with the sequential manual change on the Tiptronic part of the gate comes at a premium of £1260.It's money well spent. In a world where there are now so many different transmission systems, down to those admittedly more economical but deeply unsporting automated-clutch efforts, the DSG is a real stand-out. The automatic upward changes go through like bullets, and if you make driver-chosen sequential changes, which call for the lightest of nudges on the selector lever - as if you're making a mild suggestion rather than issuing an order - the effect is just the same.The double-clutch arrangement allows for what amounts to an overlapping of gears, with one clutch looking after first, third, fifth and reverse, while the other takes care of second, fourth and sixth. If you're accelerating in third gear, say, the system already has fourth selected but not engaged, so that whenever the upward change actually happens, it's lightning fast. Volkswagen says the change from one gear to the next happens in less than (how's that for a touch of technical pomposity, and who'd notice the under-timing anyway?) four-hundredths of a second.While the selector lever looks rather clumsy, in the words of so many 1950s road tests it "falls easily to hand". It controls (if you prefer not to leave the DSG system to its own devices) a very sophisticated arrangement indeed.Whatever mode the transmission is working in, it won't change up a gear if it feels the revs are too low, and the car might fall off the turbo boost. In a mirror-image of that, it won't change down if it senses that a couple of rods might hurtle out through the side of the block less than four-hundredths of a second after the subsequent over-rev.If you approach a 30mph zone at 60mph in sixth, the system will make sure that, by the time you've braked down to the new speed limit, it's dropped to fourth, so that there's decent throttle response available. And in either automatic or manual mode, if you pull up at a halt sign, the transmission slides neatly down to first, ready for the getaway.No individual element of this is all-new technology, of course, but the combined effect is most impressive, even if I did become slightly narked that on a couple of occasions when I snicked the selector down a gear, ahead of what I was proposing to make a sportingly-taken tight corner, the transmission refused to respond. Herr DSG is a little myopic, and his intelligence perception does not extend any farther than the leading edge of the front bumper.I can forgive him that, though, because otherwise his operations are pretty damn quick. Sorry - that should be PDQ. My attention to abbreviation-ism seems to be NBG right now. Engine 1968cc, 4 cylinders Power 138bhp Transmission 6-speed manual Fuel/CO2 46.3mpg / 165g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 9.3 seconds Top speed 125mph Price £19,790 Details correct at publication date
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