For the most part those Car of the Year awards are just self-serving marketing fodder that usually doesn’t translate into anything meaningful for your average car buyer. But this year the award winning MK7 family of cars has found an audience and given VW some much needed sales success.

In May, Volkswagen posted an 8.1 percent sales increase compared to 2014, according to . This ended pattern of monthly losses for the brand.

The positive sales numbers were mostly due to a combination of super cheap leases on Jetta sedans and the popularity of the all new Golf family of cars that include the GTI, Sportwagen, and Golf R. While the subsidized leases on the Jetta helped, Volkswagen actually sold fewer Jetta sedans in May of 2015 than in 2014. The real story is the massive increase in Golf sales from last year.

The previous generation Golf was a good car, but Volkswagen made significant improvements to the MK7 models using the MQB platform making the new car not only lighter, but more spacious as well. It is also worth noting that several auto-journos who don’t typically buy new cars thought so highly of the MK7 GTI they .

Of course Volkswagen needs to do much more than sell a little over six thousand compact hatchbacks per month. For the brand to survive in the American market a crossover is desperately needed.

However, given the popularity of the Golf family, I still maintain that a crossover/wagon option could be super successful in addition to a more traditional CUV that would replace the Tiguan. We know Volkswagen is working to up their SUV game. Let’s hope that happens sooner rather than later.