The Luxury Showdown: Volkswagen Golf R vs Mercedes-Benz EQA

As we stepped into both vehicles, it was clear that these two luxury cars were vying for the top spot in our eyes. The Volkswagen Golf R and Mercedes-Benz EQA are two of the most highly-regarded luxury cars on the market, each offering a unique blend of performance, technology, and style. In this article, we'll delve into the features, design, and overall driving experience of both vehicles to help you decide which one is right for you.

The Golf R's Interior: A Study in Simplicity

Upon entering the Golf R, it became apparent that simplicity was key to its design philosophy. The interior was clean, modern, and free from clutter. The materials used were high-quality and premium, with a focus on comfort and practicality. One of the standout features of the Golf R's interior was its use of technology. The car boasted an impressive array of infotainment systems, including an augmented reality GPS system that provided real-time navigation and traffic updates.

The EQA's Interior: A Futuristic Oasis

In contrast, the Mercedes-Benz EQA's interior was a masterclass in futuristic design. The cabin was filled with advanced technologies, including haptic feedback and advanced driver assistance systems. The car's use of premium materials and craftsmanship was evident throughout, from the soft-touch surfaces to the precision-engineered buttons and controls.

The Driving Experience: A Tale of Two Cars

When it came time to put both cars through their paces, it quickly became apparent that they had some key differences in terms of driving dynamics. The Golf R was a more agile and responsive car, with a sporty feel that was reminiscent of a hot hatch. In contrast, the EQA was a more comfortable and refined ride, with a focus on luxury and sophistication.

The Launch: A Comparison of Performance

We put both cars to the test by taking them for a spin on the road. The Golf R proved to be a formidable performer, accelerating quickly from 0-60mph in just 5.4 seconds. In contrast, the EQA's performance was slightly slower, but still respectable at around 6.1 seconds.

The Steering: A Key Differentiator

One of the most noticeable differences between the two cars was their steering. The Golf R had a more direct and connected feel, with a weighty steering system that responded eagerly to every input. In contrast, the EQA's steering felt slightly softer and less responsive, although it still provided plenty of feedback.

The Sound System: A Treat for the Ears

Both cars featured impressive sound systems, but the EQA's was arguably more comprehensive. The car's advanced audio technology included a range of features, including sound piped through the speakers and a 3D surround sound system.

The Color Palette: A Rainbow of Options

One of the most notable features of the Golf R was its impressive color palette, which boasted an incredible 40 different shades to choose from. The EQA also offered a wide range of colors, although not quite as extensive as the Golf R's.

The Verdict: A Tough Decision

So, which car is right for you? Both the Volkswagen Golf R and Mercedes-Benz EQA are excellent choices, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. For everyday driving, the EQA may be the better choice due to its comfort and luxury features. However, if you're looking for a more thrilling driving experience, the Golf R is the clear winner.

Ultimately, the decision comes down to personal preference. We recommend visiting dealerships of both cars and taking them for a test drive to see which one best suits your needs. With that said, we're confident that either car will provide an exceptional driving experience that will leave you wanting more.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyo you done yet am I done yet sister wall have you met her yeah she wanted something nautical and I see everything's blue yeah because blue is blue what does it matter right what's that one color the ear ocean saw Oceanside yeah hold on I just got to finish this cuz I said I was gonna place my order tomorrow its knocker there's 40 colors this is mocha anthracite metallic you're watching throttle house I'm Thomas I'm Jane and today we want to find out if the Mercedes miss of the a250 4matic can trump the performance of the Golf R because they're both all-wheel-drive and they're matched in price so yes these are price matched and yes the Golf R is the performance car of the two and it does come in some really cool colors as angry James pointed out in the intro but the thing is this comparison isn't just performance versus luxury because the Golf R has some pretty nice finishing and a great interior but it is very much worth noting under the hood of the R is the 2-liter TSI turbocharged engine which as usual has better internals in a larger turbocharger than its siblings so that coupled with the DSG transmission and all-wheel drive means this thing could get to 100 km/h in under five seconds so it's fast nice and really really blue so let's see what the Merc is to offer enter the most affordable Mercedes in the lineup the aid class and in Canada we get the hatchback sorry America sorry and while it's not an AMG variant this a 250 is no slouch with 221 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque powering all four wheels when necessary via the 4matic system add a bunch of options and this hat will run you a little over 48,000 Canadian as tested but it's those luxurious extras that make the R in golf r stand for wrecked the inside of the a-class is stunning and modern and despite its petite looks from the outside it actually has a more cavernous boot space than the Golf R but as Thomas said we want to find out if that's enough to make up for its inferior performance numbers and in the real world how inferior to those numbers actually feel but before we get started make sure you subscribe if you haven't already and hit the bell so you get notified as soon as our videos come out and for extra content and behind the scenes follow us on instagram at the throttle house all right the Golf R this has 288 horsepower which is down 4 horsepower from last year but it doesn't matter it still got more than James's pity 221 and it is launch control put the brake haha this is genuinely good okay I'm not gonna launch this car Thomas probably off somewhere launching the Golf R that's not what this car is about and he's also probably going on about how it has more horsepower but when it comes to the actual talk I'm only 22 pound feet of torque less than him which is a reasonably insignificant amount if we're discussing the luxuries this has on top all right yes this is the DSG transmission and I actually don't really like the DSG in the GTI nearly as much as I do in this because in this it's razor sharp the down shifts are so fast and you can downshift easily into first gear with absolutely no jerk in the car whatsoever and listen to the up shifts it's so quick and you get dsg farts coming at the back however it does have these little plasticky paddles which they're in a good spot and they work really well but because a nicety or something like an Holloway of some kind steering wheel was really nice though and the digital gauge cluster which we'll talk about later is actually really really good and while his can hear a hundred kilometers an hour in like five seconds this does it gonna clean 6.2 clip really if you don't want for speed in this it's not a very exciting engine though but then it's not piping in engine sound either so at least it's honest with itself this car actually sounds pretty good but then you realize that it kind of sounds fake because there's four cylinders and it sounds like there's five because it pipes in a fake noise if you can get over that it is quite there's quite a fair bit of drama for what the car looks like on the outside however I still find the Golf R in the way that it does power delivery and noise and everything is far more towards the side of sophisticated than it is athletic so we're in a two liter turbo engine that pushes out 221 horsepower and thanks to the 4matic system we get to put the power to all four wheels which in Canada is a lovely thing to have in fact for two grand cheaper you get the front wheel drive version which I don't if for Canada the extra two grands a no-brainer for all Drive I honestly put my foot down in this and there's 100 it is is quick enough for sure yep power delivery is really good I found in automatic mode though in anything other than race mode it doesn't really want a downshift it kind of as lugs the engine at low rpms and that gets a little bit annoying in sport mode it hangs on to the revs which is good because it gives you the access to the torque when you need it but also it's not a very nice sound so we have the same complaint in the c-class it hangs on the revs and it just kind of drones its way down but unlike the c-class which has a nice speed this goes through a seven speed which is less speed so it is a dual clutch automatic but she said the shifts are shifts are really nice I have found it a bit jerky around town there sometimes doesn't know quite what gear it wants to be in and in that sense it's not completely intuitive in the way that I think the DSG is all right I've been doing 928 liters per hundred kilometres which is decent for this much power okay handling this is an all-wheel drive car Haldex system puts up 250 percent to the back if it is needed it's very very reactive and you don't feel like you're getting that scrub in the front end from understeer like you would in a GTI and I can tell you from experience that if you're on a slippery surface you can get all four wheels spinning and pull off giant four-wheel power slides overlay footage of that right now that said however the way that the car feels at the limit is very similar to a front-wheel drive car I find that when you really start to push it you get the front end understeer it doesn't it doesn't kind of like light up the way that the Type R does or the Focus RS did but even in sport mode the steering's too light that's my complain about this and the way that the Golf R is not and there's quite a big deadness on center here there's a little bit of motion but like you really have to start turning the wheel to feel any difference and I know that the Golf R is sharper but it's light and it's accurate so for ease of living it's actually really easy to live with and I just turned around on the corner there the turning circle in this is like Fiat 500 level it's amazing we're switching this thing into comfort mode is when it shines like this the whole overarching thing of this is luxury and the ride is so nice I've been living with this in the city there's potholes galore some of them imported from the moon and this really it does well with it I don't find myself feeling uncomfortable I don't find myself apologizing to my passengers is it's a really good car ok so this is the Golf R so it's thicker sway bars and a few other suspension tweaks over the GTI and it is definitely going to be a more button-down and more planted vehicle than that Mercedes a changes in the steering is actually quite heavy it has variable ratio steering and gets more aggressive I actually like the steering in this I don't remember liking the steering in this as much as I did last time I drove a golf arm but honestly it's good the front end turns in quite well decent weight to it it feels like a sporty hatch it feels like a hot hatch even though overall I would say that this car still for me leans more towards comfort and everyday usability it does everything very very well and for all those reasons I'm really keen to see how the Mercedes does because it definitely leans more towards luxury and if it can be sporty enough it's a really tempting alternative and also these screens are incredibly dynamic you can modify them massively and I've got I've got it in the standard modes I really like it but there are some other funky modes you can do and at night time there's a bunch of ambient lighting a 64 ambient lighting settings as well so you feel like a boss and as we're about to find out because I'm gonna go talk to Thomas now the interior and the technology of this crushes the Golf R that's a very blue car this is really good at being a Golf R it's just it's really nothing can golf are more than you are a very average Thomas you're very average at being that does not mean it's average that means it's good it means it's just so competent at everything that it does this is one of the cleanest looks I've seen for the Golf R yeah it's a bit under styled though I still think this understand it states not whole point of the Golf R is it's the subtle yet and I get that but thankfully we have these colors we have the spectrum of colors now right yes and this is 24 blue this is 91 blue so I like 1991 all right whatever 91 blue okay Jupiter red Jupiter red yeah it's a planet this is a good thank you this is a good looking car actually it's really sweet looking but this does have some upgrades this whole car is a shopping packages it's the ladies thing yeah it starts as an empty car yeah so like this has adaptive LED headlights which are extra it has an AMG package it's called a night package but it comes with AMG dying so we get black accents we get these two spoke five spoke double 5 spoke wheel ok AMG wheels black wing mirrors it's a carbon fiber T but I have carbon fiber wing mirrors they're really cool I have 19-inch wheels which are very cool the black the black accents on this with the blue it's awesome it looks really this is actually one of the nicest blues I've seen on a car this reminds me of the blue on it's like a Miami blue for Porsche and also similar to out easier on that yeah yeah yeah no it's really really good let's look at the back I'm not sure about the chrome door handles though they're a bit I know it's too much too much Mercedes slate would look good body colour or black yeah I agree yeah so quad exhausts little tiny our badge which isn't big enough to show off that you have an are yeah this is I think this is pretty sweet are these real huh these real we don't talk about those real James they might not be real they're not real that's real in the anymore you know what those are real that's way are they they're real those are real okay okay Jules looks really good on that it does actually it's very out II as this kind of I've been told by two of my friends Jerry and Lewis it looks like the back of a Kia Forte and I think I agree with them is that props to the Kier or perhaps the Mercedes I don't know all right you want to get destroyed in the interior section yeah mine first okay okay alright this hasn't changed much it's a go but it's one of the few cars that I would say it's not due for an update you know how we always say that yeah it doesn't it doesn't feel special to this digital dash which I actually I really like in here I didn't like this in the Jetta even though I'm positive it's the exact same - and for some reason it fits in here really really well I like it yeah no it's good white stitching looks really neat on the steering with our badge otherwise the infotainment is fine there's a thing we bring your hand up and it goes which it shows you stuff I wish it made a sound effect like that heated seats I do have here the steering wheel otherwise that the main thing to make take away from this is just build quality yeah it's just really nicely done everything fits really well and the same as the exterior we just got it of a Tesla Model 3 and income no common comparison okay I got kidnapped you got offender sound system yeah it's decent it's and actually I don't mind it at all and of us is Burmeister in that one otherwise this is this is a golf cabin and it is very good I think the back seats real quickly okay so the front seats are really comfortable and bolstered and it's not like a nice leather and back here they're also really comfortable I'm really comfortable right now and it's it's like soft its soft I got a ton of headroom and side headroom and arm room like it's just really usable your sunroof they know you can't get it in the are only the GTI which is fine okay I'll make a digital gauge cluster the are yes and also in the GLI you get the gauge cluster but then there's no sunroof in the art but you can't get in the DTI but no digital gauge cluster yeah got it stick that in your pocket this is it's just in a different league welcome to luxury it's just an even I like the door this is smooth Oh down here - yeah you can trim out like when we were in the c300 you can make it work yeah you can even get it in the States the Pentagon yeah no so again this is a shopping cart of a car so there's loads of packages one of the packages we have is the Premium Package and you cannot option this car without it comes with you mean you you have to or it no you you don't have to but you really should be mad not to 3,000 Canadian whatever that is in the in the US and it comes with everything like the 10 inch dual screens The Blind Spot Assist Apple carpet everything you think comes with a luxury car you need that so you need it so that's an that's a no-brainer yeah so the base price of this car is not the base price let's go okay so this has the the thumb adjusting has been awesome steering wheel thumb the justice it works so well and I've got this pen down here which oh this has got haptic feedback and that's really intuitive like they're the calibration of like what I think my finger should do to what happens on the screen is just bang on perfect I've already go on with the system what a good job or but the important thing for this car is that the tech is like top-notch yeah so we have an augmented reality GPS you show me that it's crazy it's so cool I mean we got heated seats heated steering wheel which is an extra yeah more importantly we have hey Mercedes which is there can I help you I actually have a list from the sadie's of things that you can hey Mercedes what would you like to do close the sunshade I'm closing the roller send lines I don't think I've ever seen let's go yeah that's cool hey Mercedes how can I help you do I need an umbrella today no it doesn't appear to be raining at the moment at all today in the current location she's not wrong all right let's go check out the back seats because I've heard that they're small they've been I'm sorry to be interrupting you to say no thank you enough okay honestly not that bad at all it's actually not that bad he no not as soft no I saw no nearly as soft as a golfer Headroom is fine like these aren't heated but ya know this is this is totally fine really nice those ones the memory seats as well by the way four hundred and fifty dollar upgrade to get the passenger seat as a memory seat two for under fifty bucks how much do you love your space yeah okay all right a 250 you know what is actually a decent amount of torque it's not a slow car it's actually quick its bordering on hot hatch territory actually it's like it feels almost as fast as a GTI it's not as fast as the Golf R though all right tell us what's going on about the launch in this so let's see what's going on here down oh hello and there is you're not 100 that's good six fast definitely quite a bit faster than that Mercedes all right the steering is really light it weight builds in the corner though and it's pretty obvious where you're pointing it but with the biggest thing I notice is at the front end of this it feels a lot more like boat like then the Golf R does so the Golf R is way more connected to the road however the undeniable thing about this car is that it's in just a different level of luxury like the interior of this it just it feels so much more futuristic and so much nicer than the Golf R and that's saying a lot because golf's have really good interiors there's a little it's a little bit complicated a little bit to get used to but once you do this is just awesome it's in the future and it feels fantastic also I know that sound is piped in I think it sounds really good I like it it sounds much more infused than the Mercedes I love the color of this car you can see it everywhere so bright the fact that this comes in like 40 colours is one of my favorite things about this car yeah the turning is tighter in this and there's there's less of a debt deadness on center and also the note the nose is shorter on this oh I like that DSG okay so this this is tough like the moment I got in this car I was reminded why it's so good and the feeling between this and the Mercedes don't think I mean this was it was kind of like a things just got interesting type moment because they're weirdly closely matched even if not empowered just like the bars of all the things you'd want from a car the aggregate is it's got to be a similar number so it's really tough it's a really tough decision for everyday living I think this is probably the better choice but for me I I still always lean towards the car that's just a little bit more fun to drive every day and the Golf R just gives that to me so I think at this point my life anyway I would still sacrifice the the luxury that this has for the fun the Golf R gives you all the time that's honestly so close that is not an easy choice to make period I don't know these seats are more can I get on with these seats more but then the the sheer tech and beauty of the interior of the Mercedes wins me over you know what for me this would come down to going to the dealers of each one and being like what can you do for me and that's how I'd probably decide so let us know your thoughts which one would you take leave us a comment subscribe and we'll see you next time thanks for watching\n"