The question is, why this over a Golf R?

It’s based on a great hot hatch. Can it achieve greatness itself? By Anthony rench-Constant

Volkswagen T-Roc R 2.0 TSI 4Motion Month 1

The story so far

A taller, heavier, uglier, pricier Golf R, because everyone wants a compact SUV

+ Goes like a stabbed rat

Will it prove as engaging as a Golf R?

Logbook

Price £38,450 (as tested £42,359) Performance 1984cc turbocharged four-cylinder, 296bhp, 4.8sec 0-62mph, 155mph E ciency 32.5mpg (o cial), 28.1mpg (tested), 76g/ km CO2 Energy cost 19.3p per mile Miles this month 1007 Total miles 1071

If the Golf R currently constitutes the cake-and-eat-it of the hatchback world, there’s no reason to suppose the T-Roc R won’t tick all the boxes with equal insouciance in the realm of the compact SUV.

Except in the styling department, wherein VW has clearly lost its way. Each element of the T-Roc’s couture seems to have been carried to the clay from a separate annex of the design department, none of which have been speaking to the others.

Judging by shots of the Mk 8 Golf GTI, a lower front grille styled on Aardman Animation’s Wallace sucking a leaking pen while composing a letter of complaint about the Wrong Trousers having gone wrong is to become commonplace on the bows of future VWs. It doesn’t particularly suit the Golf, and on the T-Roc just looks wrong, much like the going-nowhere crease curving over the rear door handle.

Mercifully, things are much less muddled on board. From both a visual and tactile perspective, some of the plastics fall short in the context of a car costing over two grand more than the Golf R, but all is as well screwed together and intuitively operable as we’ve come to expect from VW.

No complaints about the driving position or the deliciously grabbable steering wheel. But it must be said that climbing behind the wheel fails to deliver that feeling of imminent immersion in the driving process promised by the Golf R; strange how sitting just a whisker more upright and a few millimetres higher can make all the difference between ‘on’ and ‘in’.

There’s just about room in the rear seats for a pair of bickering teenagers, but the evil-smelling dog fares less well astern, where a steeply raked rear screen narrows the canine head space afforded by the removal of the parcel shelf to barely acceptable limits. ⊲