Volkswagen Golf GTI Clubsport Edition 40
Plenty at evo saw this Golf as the sweet-spot of the GTI range, but one thought its longwinded name was a bit of a misnomer
II SPENT A COUPLE OF days in a new, Mk7.5 Golf GTI recently. Just a basic one: 227bhp, passive dampers. With our Mk7 GTI Clubsport Edition 40 heading back to VW a week or so later, it was perfect timing, providing a reminder of what the regular Golf GTI now offers and where the Edition 40 goes beyond that.
With its modest-by-modern-standards power output, it’s easy to overlook the standard GTI. I know I’ve been guilty of that. Yet it’s still an impressive thing. It can cover ground at a surprising pace, erasing any concerns about the quality of the road surface you’re passing over, effortlessly maintaining maximum momentum around bends, and always completing overtakes quicker than the numbers on the spec sheet might lead you to expect. It’s still a great hot hatch.
How does the Edition 40 improve upon it? Well, there’s the extra power, of course: 261bhp in first and second gears, 286bhp in third and above. The chassis, meanwhile, gets firmer and lower springs with retuned dampers, an electronically managed limited-slip differential and a shift in the grip bias towards the front of the car. And then there’s
the unique looks: the revised front bumper, with ‘air-curtain’ vents that neatly start the stripes that continue down the car’s flanks, plus a larger spoiler atop the tailgate. All-in-all, it’s a neat package of improvements that seems well worth the premium, the exact figure being £2675 more than the regular Mk7.5 GTI, or £1315 more than the 242bhp Mk7.5 GTI Performance. That said, our long-termer came in at £36,366 against a £31,250 starting price thanks to a generous helping of options, including adaptive dampers, 19-inch alloys, satnav, some driverassist features, a paint upgrade and two extra doors, all of which I could happily have lived without.
Sure enough, our Edition 40 proved faster, keener, more involving and more entertaining than the latest 227bhp car. It felt like a Golf GTI that had been perfectly amplified in every aspect, stopping just short of causing any distortion. And yet… can’t a little distortion sometimes be a good thing? By compromising a car in some ways, it can be elevated in others, and made to feel truly special. And that’s exactly what I expected given the use of the word ‘Clubsport’ in this Golf’s name.
For me it’s a label that conjures up images of something super-focused, with a level of power that feels barely contained, suspension firm enough to make passengers (but not drivers) complain, seats so buckety that you occasionally find them a chore to get into, and styling that would make some onlookers frown in disapproval. But this Clubsport had none of that. You get the feeling VW could have used the same spec as the default for the Mk7.5 GTI and it wouldn’t have felt out of place.
Perhaps that’s why I mostly found myself referring to the car as ‘ the Edition 40’, no ‘Clubsport’; a subconscious attempt to suppress those expectations. In fact, had this car been named thus, following the pattern of its anniversarycelebrating predecessors, the Edition 30 and Edition 35, I think those fleeting moments of disappointment would never have existed.
They certainly didn’t seem to exist for my colleagues. Whoever borrowed the Edition 40, they would always return the key singing the car’s praises, which seems to confirm that any problems with the Edition 40 are mine, not the car’s.
Actually, our long-termer did have a few problems, albeit minor ones. A bit of trim on the driver’s door would buzz quietly every now and then, while the front bumper developed an annoying and rather loud creak/squeak that would sound whenever the car travelled over bumps or rough surfaces. Nearby, but seemingly unrelated, one of the headlamp washer jets wouldn’t return fully to its hidden position after popping out to do its business, and there was also an annoying bit of carpet that refused to stay correctly tucked behind the plastic trim for the driver’s door aperture. But all of these were small snags in the grand scheme of things, and all no doubt easy fixes for a VW dealer.
Otherwise this Golf proved faultless. The running costs were pretty good, too. It averaged over 30mpg, which is respectable given my commute contains lots of B-roads that are driven with enthusiasm. And fuel aside, we didn’t spend a penny on it. When it left us with nearly 10,500 miles on the clock it was still wearing its original tyres, the fronts with at least a couple of thousand miles left in them, the rears much more. It was also still 4400 miles away from needing a service, and it’s worth noting that VW offers a package that gets you the first two of these for just £287.82.
So the Clubsport Edition 40 is a good car, then. A very, very good car, in fact. If, like me, you prefer your hot hatches with a more hardcore edge – think Cup-spec RS Méganes or the outgoing Civic Type R – you may find the Edition 40 a touch too polite. But if you fancy the idea of a keener Golf GTI that addresses the shortcomings of the regular and Performance models’ specs, then look no further.
‘Whoever borrowed the GTI Edition 40, they would always return the key singing the car’s praises’