The Volkswagen Golf is a small family car manufactured by Volkswagen

Volkswagen

Volkswagen is a German automobile manufacturer and is the original and biggest-selling marque of the Volkswagen Group, which now also owns the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, and Škoda marques and the truck manufacturer Scania.Volkswagen means "people's car" in German, where it is...

 since 1974 and marketed worldwide across six generations, in various body configurations and under various nameplate

Nameplate

A nameplate identifies and displays a person or product's name. Name plates are usually shaped as rectangles but are also seen in other shapes, sometimes taking on the shape of someone’s name...

s – as the Volkswagen Rabbit in the United States and Canada (Mk1 and Mk5), and as the Volkswagen Caribe in Mexico (Mk1).

The front-wheel drive

Front-wheel drive

Front-wheel drive is a form of engine/transmission layout used in motor vehicles, where the engine drives the front wheels only. Most modern front-wheel drive vehicles feature a transverse engine, rather than the conventional longitudinal engine arrangement generally found in rear-wheel drive and...

 Golf was Volkswagen's first successful replacement for the air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle

Volkswagen Beetle

The Volkswagen Type 1, widely known as the Volkswagen Beetle or Volkswagen Bug, is an economy car produced by the German auto maker Volkswagen from 1938 until 2003...

.