“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” At least that seems to be the mantra at VeeDub Canada these days when it comes to entry-level motorcars.

Looking for an inexpensive way to contest the Yaris, Fit and Versa-type subcompacts positioned under its $19,990 Rabbit, Volkswagen recently re-launched the last generation of its four-door Golf, slapping on the “City” prefix and a $14,900 base price.

We sampled the reborn hatchback recently found it to drive, well, exactly like a last-generation Golf - not that there’s anything wrong with that, thanks to VW’s reputation for over-engineering its vehicles in both materials and road manners. In nutshell, the “old” hatch, now built in Brazil, still feels competitive.

All City Golfs are motivated by Volkswagen’s old 2.0-litre inline four, making 115 hp and 122 lb-ft of torque. It’s not the smoothest engine, but still quite willing and fuel efficient (9.6/7.2 city/highway L/100 km) mated to a four-speed automatic gearbox.

Our tester wore a $740 Convenience package (remote trunk release, power locks, windows and mirrors, cruise and keyless entry), a $205 Cold Weather package (heated seats and washer nozzles) and air con ($1,350), leading to an as-tested price of $19,140.

It should be noted that quality was an issue with this Golf generation early on, but VW claims all hiccups have been ironed out of these Canadian-exclusive models. We noted no faults in our Teutonic tester.

At the end of the day, the City Golf’s most noteworthy advantage over the Yaris/Fit/Versa crowd is a much more planted, substantial (i.e., Germanic) road feel, still a rarity in this thriftiest of segments.