Volkswagen Golf R

REPORT 2

£40,025 OTR/£48,450 as tested/£390pcm

WHY IT’S HERE

Can the fastest, priciest Golf finally make us fall for the MkVIII?

DRIVER

Ollie Kew

BACK ON PAGE 34 YOU’LL SEE THE NEW AUDI RS3 DO BATTLE WITH AMG’s super hatch and you might think “hang on, why isn’t your Golf R here?” Well, it was. The Golf R journeyed to Wales, but was barred from the main test, partly because it’s considerably less powerful, and partly because even with its as-tested price it’s £10k too cheap to be a true hyper hatch.

It was an interesting lens to reappraise the Golf R through, though. How cheap and nasty its interior feels, how its false hi-fi engine noise detracts from the character, and how the Golf is by far the most subtle hot hatch on the market: no bespoke wheelarches, just some flared bumper trim. And the prettiest exhausts of the three, because they’re real ones.

What intrigued me most of all was the Drift Mode, because that’s the headline act, isn’t it? VW puts that on a car because it knows giddy journalists like me will mention it high up in the story, and that’ll mean we chat about it lots, take exciting pictures and you’ll want to buy one.

What’s alarming is – just like the AMG and RS3 – how unintuitive it is. Photographer Jonny bravely placed himself in a safe spot to take photos of my sideways legendariness, but the car never did the same thing twice.

Sometimes it’s just understeer, sometimes it snaps sideways hard, other times it arcs more gracefully, but then angrily swings back into line as the torque runs out. On the road, these drift-o-matics are ironically far less predictable than old-fashioned RWD oversteer, and the ethics of hiding them a mere touchscreen press away does niggle me, if I’m honest.

On a basic ‘living with ‘em’ point, the Golf was about three or four mpg more frugal than the AMG, but could only match the much lustier Audi five-pot’s fuel economy, despite being a cylinder and 80bhp down. The red and yellow cars also pulled into focus just how infuriating the R’s auto upshift gearbox is – I’m in manual mode, stop doing it for me!