Today I’m in North Carolina with the pinnacle of golf performance, the all-new Volkswagen Golf R.
As is characteristic with Volkswagen, this is a vehicle that has been available in Europe for a while and is now available in the United States.
The important thing to know about the 8th generation golf r is that there is no longer a regular golf.
All golf models in the United States are performance oriented.
We have the gti and then we have the golf r, which is the pinnacle of golf performance.
Even though the volkswagen platform on which the golf is built has the same name as the seventh generation golf, this is an entirely new generation model that looks like it belongs in the volkswagen golf buggy.
19-inch wheels There’s not a lot of rubber on there, but thankfully there’s an adaptive suspension system that really helps improve the ride and in large part compensate for those really really low profile tires moving fully around to the side.
Volkswagen hasn’t turned this into a liftback or a sportback like we see with the honda civic hatchback, and I would argue that the civic hatchback isn’t really a hatchback at all.
The vw has more back seat headroom than the honda, as well as a highly practical and square luggage capacity, all while preserving the utilitarian outward proportions that you’d expect from a hot hatch.
Obviously, there are four doors here, but there is no two-door version of the golf in the United States for 2022.
We have a bigger spoiler up top and these massive quad exhaust tips below.
I really like the new r stylized logo that we find under the volkswagen logo and as we’ve seen in volkswagens before, this houses the backup camera and the hatch release so we simply push it there pop the hatch up like that and then when you’re in reverse that pops open to give you the backup camera under the hoo.
This produces 315 horsepower and up to 295 pound-feet of torque depending on whether you get the dual clutch transmission or the manual transmission.
I would argue that if you’re debating between the manual and automatic transmissions in the golf r, I would get the automatic.
The automatic transmission gives you 15 pound-feet more torque and the horsepower curve is a little bit different with the 7-segment display.
For the time being, we have a four-way adjustable lumbar support and a power driver seat with a three-position memory tilt telescopic steering column with a really large range of motion now the front passenger seat is still a manual design even in the golf r perhaps the thing I love most about the golf is the seating position front or rear it’s definitely more upright and crossover like than we find in the average compact sedan or hatchback that’s always been the case with the golf The front seat tracks also move decently backward, so if you’re a taller driver looking for something small, easy to park, and with excellent performance, as you can see there’s a lot of room in here now you’ll end up sitting right next to the b pillar in the vehicle, but this could still accommodate six foot five and taller people jumping into the back we also find tons of headroom, I have about an inch and a half of headroom, which is definitely more than we find Even though we don’t have quite as much cargo capacity behind the second row seats as we do in some of those vehicles, it’s more practical because you can remove this little cargo divider.
This is one of the hard style cargo dividers, which isn’t exactly my preference because it’s a little bit trickier to remove than I would like, but you can pull it completely out of the vehicle and then line it up behind the second row seats.
There’s plenty of support there, and the trim on the doors and dashboard reminds me of knurled metal soft touch materials are found on the top of the door, but we do find some hard plastics on the main portions of the door to help improve durability around that insert, so this ring sort of around the insert that’s a hard plastic we find hard plastics down there at the bottom of the door for instance right there around that storage cubby moving over to the dashboard The p button controls the vehicle’s parking assist systems, while the temperature button is just over here, and this button controls the vehicle’s mode changes.
Below that, we have two large air vents, two USB ports, a place to store your smartphone, and a unique center console design compared to the gti.
This has a joystick style shifter so we press forward for reverse and pull back for drive.
It’s not a double tap design like we see in Volvos, you actually have two detents in there so you can just tap forward for neutral park is this button.
There’s a 12 volt power port right there, a center console that ratchets into place, slides forward and back as an arm rest, and then opens to reveal a fairly decently sized storage compartment for a small car like the golf.
The heads-up display is definitely a nice touch in the new golf r and the new gti as well, it gives us turn-by-turn navigation directions, speed limit, and of course the status of the active safety systems.
It has satellite navigation right in the middle if your vehicle is so equipped you can get an analog view you can configure a lot of the displays in here there’s an active safety view right there and in some of these views you can even decide what’s contained inside these round modules on each side that’s done using the touch controls over here on the right side of the steering wheel in this display mode for example you can choose what you want to see over there There are bumps out here on the bottom bumps on the inside up top big paddle shifters on the back these are bigger than the gti there’s also a r button on the steering wheel that brings you to some of the custom drive mode settings for the system we have the controls for the adaptive cruise control over here on the left side the multi-function lcd instrument cluster over here on the right side along with the heated steering wheel control and then volkswagen puts the heated steering wheel control and then volks We have comfort sport race if we engage race and then wait for that little display to pop up we also have a drift mode there a special mode which is an interesting touch that really ratchets things up to the next level and of course a custom mode one of the most interesting things about the custom mode is just how much customization you can get you can see exactly how many settings there are between the firmest suspension setting in this vehicle all the way to the softest suspension setting in this vehicle and then of course a custom mode One of the interesting things about custom mode, as I mentioned earlier, is that you can have things like the race drivetrain tune with the softest suspension tune available, which is actually on the softer side of things from a comfort standpoint.
I like the fact that Volkswagen has given us a wicked fast golf that is also eminently daily driver livable.
If you don’t like the digital augmented exhaust sounds, you can turn them off in custom mode.
Unfortunately, I don’t have an example of this.
Some people may arrive a little slower depending on what you’re doing with the vehicle, which means the golf r could be faster or slower than some of the direct competition depending on what you’re comparing it to, whether it’s an automatic to automatic comparison, an automatic to a manual comparison, or honestly manual to manual as well.
This is especially important for an all-wheel drive vehicle like the golf r, which is generally all-wheel drive with t.
Even if the front tire feel isn’t the finest, the steering is precise, quick, and simple to grasp what all the tires are doing.
With electric power steering, this is better than most.
It reminds me a lot of an amg version of the mercedes-benz gla, which is good company when we’re talking about a volkswagen.
The gla has a very visceral, raw feeling to it as well, but oddly enough, this feels more like a luxury car in terms of how it feels and drives out on the road than that mercedes gla.
When it’s in racing mode, it has the same directness, tautness, and suspension, but when it’s in comfort mode, it’s more pleasant and livable.
If you’re startled by that, I wouldn’t be.
To be honest, a lot of modern amg models have become a little bit too firm in my opinion for having a mercedes logo on the same vehicle rather unfortunately, I have yet to actually drive the new subaru wrx so far, but the adaptive suspension system in that vehicle does not offer you quite as many options as what we see in the golf r this also definitely seems to have less body roll than what we see in the golf r This golf r is just so much fun, from the exhaust burbles to the impeccable handling to the quick steering and the fact that if you don’t need to be a boy racer on the weekend, I can just hit this drive mode button here and put it into the comfort mode, let’s go ahead and do that, and then this becomes an eminently livable vehicle, which is really surprising for the kind of tires that we have on this th We don’t know how much power it’ll have, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s equal to or more than this.
That system won’t motivate all four wheels, and as we’ve seen with honda in the past, it won’t come with an automatic transmission.
You may also compare it to a bmw 2 series, a Mercedes-Benz cla, or a Mercedes-Benz gla.
In terms of general format, this is a little bit closer to the gla, but the gla is going to cost you a lot more now you can get a much more powerful gla, but it’ll cost you tens of thousands of dollars more the gla 35 is probably the closest corollary to this, but it’ll already be more expensive the gla 45 will be even more powerful and even more expensive for now bottom line the golf r is super simple this is the absolute ultimate hot hatch in America right If you’re looking for a mainstream performance vehicle, especially if you’re looking at the subaru wrx or the upcoming honda civic type r, I would definitely put the golf r on your shopping list.
I love the look, I love the look inside, and I love the amount of tech, and of course the all-wheel drive system that we find on this that we won’t find on the next generation honda civic type r.