The Road and Its Delays: A Driving Experience with the VW Golf R

As I took to the road, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. The 2022 VW Golf R was ahead of me, its all-wheel-drive system and manual transmission promises of a thrilling driving experience. But as I began my journey, I noticed something peculiar - a delay in power transfer before the Haldex transferred power to the rear wheels. This slight hesitation was noticeable, but not enough to detract from the overall drive.

The Golf R's Power Transfer: A Game-Changer

As I continued driving, I realized that this delay was actually a clever design feature. It allowed for a smooth transition of power to the rear wheels, giving me more control and precision in my driving. The Haldex system worked seamlessly, transferring power as needed to maintain traction and stability. This subtle yet effective system made all the difference in my driving experience.

A Delightful Experience on the Street

One of the most significant advantages of the Golf R is its approachability. It's a car that feels comfortable and accessible, making it perfect for everyday driving. Unlike the RS model, which can be a bit quirky and edgy, the Golf R is more laid-back and inviting. I found myself feeling at ease behind the wheel, able to tackle twisty roads with confidence. The adaptive dampers worked beautifully, absorbing bumps and potholes with ease.

A Driver's Paradise: Performance and Handling

But what really sets the Golf R apart is its performance and handling capabilities. With the manual transmission, I was able to feel a deep connection to the car, using the clutch and accelerator to coax the best out of it. The engine tuning was smooth and responsive, with plenty of grunt on tap for when I needed it most. And with the all-wheel-drive system working in harmony with the stability control system, I felt like I had an extra pair of hands on the road.

Disabling Stability Control: A Matter of Taste

For more aggressive driving, I turned off the stability control and traction control systems, allowing me to fully unleash the Golf R's potential. This was only necessary on the track or autocross course, where the default system worked so well that it didn't need intervention. But even with the systems enabled, I found the handling to be superb, with plenty of grip and agility on offer.

A Comparison: The Golf R vs. Other Performance Cars

In a performance comparison, the Golf R doesn't quite rank at the top. However, when considering usability and street driving ability, it's hard to beat. With its comfortable ride quality, adaptive dampers, and all-wheel-drive system, this car is a joy to drive every day. The manual transmission is also a highlight, with none of the grinds or weird problems I've experienced in other cars.

Conclusion: A Compromise for Performance

Ultimately, the Golf R is a car that doesn't quite connect on an emotional level. It's not the greatest driver's car, but it's one of the best all-around vehicles available today. With its unique blend of performance and usability, it's a car that will appeal to a wide range of drivers. And while it may not be the most raw or aggressive performer out there, it's certainly one of the best.

Final Thoughts: The Golf R as a Performance Car

In conclusion, my experience with the VW Golf R has left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I love the car's usability and street driving ability - it's a joy to drive every day. But on the other hand, I find that it doesn't quite connect with me on an emotional level as a driver's car. It's a compromise, perhaps, but one that makes sense for those who value practicality and everyday driving above pure performance.

A Duality of Performance Cars

When comparing this to other performance cars in the same segment, I found myself drawn to the Hyundai Veloster N - it offers a unique blend of performance and usability that sets it apart from its competitors. But ultimately, my favorite car remains the Skoda STIRA, which has a certain emotional connection to me that the Golf R just doesn't have. Perhaps this is due to the StIRA's more understated design aesthetic, or maybe it's the way the car seems to sing when driven at a high level.

Ultimately, whether or not the VW Golf R is the right car for you will depend on your priorities as a driver. If you value usability and street driving ability above pure performance, then this car is certainly worth considering. But if you're looking for a raw and emotional experience behind the wheel, you may want to look elsewhere.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI've just finished up a lengthy video on the VW GTI now it's time for the Golf R now you're probably waiting for some type of sarcastic comment how I've had to carry a code reader around with me or I needed a flatbed on standby and I'm sorry to disappoint I've needed neither of those for this car you now you've seen the exterior montage and I'm gonna tell you something when I first saw this in person I thought this is supposed to be some type of sports car hatchback you have to be kidding me it's so under styled it just seems so bland and people will say well it's mature it's grown-up well I kind of get that namely if you take a look at the Civic type-r and you go running away it that's one extreme this is the other but if you're somebody that likes that understated look this is definitely going to tickle your rectum now the biggest and most welcome update is the full LED headlamps in the front which are self-adjusting they've ditched the xenon bulbs next this has the optional 235 Series Continental tires which are in my opinion excellent on here it gives you great grip and they don't ride like concrete which I was surprised everything else is you know standard Golf R stuff you have this black glossy trim on the lower half of the car which is gonna be a nightmare to clean and the quad tip exhausts take a look at the hatch area now my buddy Slade said you know my mom wants to go on a date with you can you believe that I said yeah why not I'm game so I picked her up in the Golf R and I said mrs. K how do you like it she said well I'm a little concerned my ex-husband had an Equinox who's always in the shop but it hauled everything I needed and I said well what do you want to put in here and she said well I'm concerned it's not gonna haul in my books I said baby where we're going you're not gonna need books put her in the passenger seat she fell asleep in like three minutes took her to the library and she was utterly shocked at all the space in here the way the seats folded down I mean she couldn't even contain herself and she's a closet case archaeologist so there's a lot of stuff I learned that day let me tell you all right the interior space there's a few schools the thought about this the first being I think this is going to hold up extremely well over time in terms of design in 10 years you're gonna look back and think well this is a classic interior space the door panel design the handles the upper - the lower parts there's just not a lot of gimmicks in here they didn't throw in yellow or green accents or anything just off the deep end but at the same time that's the controversy it's very monochromatic it's greenly sterile and devoid of any personality but again that's a huge pro to this it's going to age well with the exception of the glossy black plastic I don't get it I keep talking about this in every video and it I feel like the design departments in these cars in these car studios now are just like oh what's everybody else doing because I can't come up with an original thought anymore it's just the dumbest material for an interior space now back to the good things the seats the Golf R gets these extremely supportive leather seats with a high bolster that isn't like cement you can get in here they're pretty pliable and they do hold you in pretty well and they're not some type of race seat it's not trying to be a hardcore track seat it's just a little bit more supportive than a standard one so when you're whipping it around you're not sliding all over some people may like it others may not the driver's seat is electronically adjustable which is great the passenger seat is kind of half in half which is strange to me but that's what it is the HVAC controls do not have to they're not tied to the touchscreen you can do all your functions without ever touching the touchscreen which is one of the best designs the infotainment much like the GTI it's the panasonic derived head unit and the audio system is splendor but it's really Panasonic all of that works extremely well if this is one of the faster infotainment you're ever going to find I still don't like the fact that it's so bright even though it's an IPS panel which means you have better black levels and your gauge cluster is also a digital screen in this car much like the Audi's you can customize it you can configure it in the daylight it looks great but at night much like all screens it's way too bright you can't dim it down enough and then I wonder my biggest question about these screens is you know let's say you have this car for five or six years and I worked in the tech field around thousands of displays that were on all the time they either had burn-in issues or they'd have dead pixels or strange ghosting problems or problems with brightness uniformity and that's something I'm really curious to see how these things hold up over time and then of course the cost to replace them now the interior space as a whole is the same as the GT I was just subtle differences like the shift knob is no longer a golf ball it has some type of carbon fiber wrap to it the armrest you can't open it it's locked out from the factory because this is a German import and why they couldn't have the dealerships do PDI's to take the screws out is beyond me so that's something you're gonna have to do but they make up for it in here with so much attention to detail the flat-bottom steering wheel feels great the door pocket areas are felt or carpet lined so when you put hard plastics in there it doesn't rattle around as much the build quality and fit and finish in here is got to be an 8 out of 10 and that's why you're gonna enjoy this car for years to come and that's why so many people love it so much and from a non fanboy perspective I could see myself owning a car like this and driving it every day alright enough of that let's head into the shop and take a look at the technical aspects of the Golf R it's here the golf are mmm so impressed you are impressed this is more of what we saw with the GTI it's on the MQB platform which is Volkswagens bread-and-butter everything well not everything but they're driven with the same thing they've been use it for 15 or 20 years yeah it's this is how and I talked about this with the GTI and the Tiguan this is how they're able to mass-produce cars so well there's there's they're basically giant Legos and when you master this like they have and like what Toyota's doing now you can have a car that rides amazing and the golf is just a good example of how well you can if you do it right from the start this is one of the best riding cars and it's segment and there's not a ton of fancy stuff here either to do it you know in terms of no it's basic as hell yeah with the Gulf are there are some differences you got a big sway bar you got a bigger swing and rear yep the suspension has been changed you have adaptive Monroe dampers made in Spain and I constantly talk about adaptive dampers being a negative thing for most companies not here they they make them worthwhile soft it has a comfort mode comfort mode is a true comfort mode it doesn't ride like it doesn't ride like oh okay comfort mode is hard and then you go to track mode and it's like beat your butt it's not the comfort mode the other day I had we had a 1995 Lincoln Town Car and that thing was Comfort well yeah well ok it'll never be comfort mode like that but it's usable you know there's a definite difference which is really nice on the road for a car that you want to drive more aggressively you can really use this as a daily driver the next thing you're going to notice on driving in the Scot is it has a variable gear ratio steering rack 2.1 turns lock to lock and it will go from 9 5 to 14 1 in terms of steering changes and you definitely notice this in like a parking lot you're like holy that this thing turn / quickly you know I mean I like it definitely you know some cars you don't notice it as much but this one you definitely do the next thing that you're gonna notice before we get to the back Scott is something important this is completely German made the other golf's in North America are made in Mexico the GTI and all the base ones the engine is made in Hungary but the transmission and a total assembly is made in Germany so if you're somebody that wants a German made Volkswagen this is one of those so that's kind of a pro if you look at it that way the next thing that you're gonna see is much like on the GTI you have a front-wheel drive Haldex front differential now of course this is all-wheel drive that's why you get the Golf R but BorgWarner makes the front differential and it operates almost identically to the GTI now BorgWarner is a massive OEM and you see it working on cars all the time they are they make everything they make turbos they make differentials they make bearings they make everything yeah so that there they pretty much could probably make a car if they wanted to but they're smart enough not yeah exactly their bread-and-butter selling parts to companies that don't want to make their own stuff alright the Gulf are one of the primary reasons why you would buy this and I'm gonna say just straight I wouldn't even consider the GTI after I drove this because all the problems that the GTI had with terminal understeer a weirdness with the Haldex on the front is solved by having four wheels driven now the Haldex on the rear is interesting because it's a electro-hydraulic lee actuated system using multi-plate clutch so this is and the ECU is over here so the ECU is looking it's connected to the front half of the car and when you it sense this wheel slip in the front it instantaneously couples this entire setup this will actuate the hydraulic fluid slip and on slip the clutches and it will take 50% of the torque up to 50% of the tour to the rear and because those clutches can slip it can send power to each wheel as you need it and it will also use the stability control system to break the innermost wheel to get the whole system working right what does it have competition mode it doesn't know competition mode unfortunately but it has race mode which you can consider to be competition mode now people talk about well what's how's the stability control can you turn it off and I've tried it with it on and off and I feel like it's still there but it's it has to be because all of this is electronically controlled via sensors so even if you turn off stability control it still needs to get data from the front wheels to the back to understand how to transfer power I mean come to split the power equally to balance the car out so really with a system like this there's no way to just really go I'm totally analog and you know that's a pro or con depending on who you are the all-wheel drive system is capable of like I start to say decoupling itself it will run in front-wheel drive mode only and it will only drive the rear wheels during an event a cornering event or a loss attraction so it is extremely efficient you don't lose a lot of fuel economy with this but you have the rear end on tap when you need it it sounds like your kind of day alright the last thing to talk about is something simple this car is 0.2 inches lower than the GTI so you're getting extra performance and there's been some changes to the toe links as well so that is why you are getting extreme performance with the Golf R I would say extreme performance enhanced performance yeah yeah Scott under the hood what do we got some TSI our power yep 2-liter turbocharged ei eight eight eight this has been recycled reused except for the Golf R we have more power and torque because they have completely changed the cylinder head design including the the pistons even though that's not really the hood but there's internal changes here it has don't you over rev it it will contact the head so be part attack yeah okay good point it has cool the EGR it has a different turbocharger different tuning obviously to go with all of that and this has to be one of the best tuned modern for poppers I've driven where it's really smooth all the time perfect idle obviously this is new 9,000 miles on it there's no weirdness there's no hesitation there's no revving it really really is great to drive this now let's talk about some of the negative aspects of this motor Scott yeah you can lift that off for this it has a different high pressure fuel pump in America I'm not quite sure why and I need to do more research on this but we're not getting dual injection motors here we're still just getting direct injection only and when I posted that this car was going to be on in a video finally some of the patreon said can you please talk about the blockage is a piece of yes talk about the fine print of that so I'm gonna do that Volkswagen in recent history has had some problems with quality and some of it is just in their choice of parts which we were talking about this has an electronic water pump which is a pretty common failure point the hell Dex pumps tend to go out and need to be replaced if you're driving like a maniac the high-pressure fuel pumps will fail and has problems with carbon build up things like spark plugs failing prematurely check engine lights for misfires or random misfires weird stuff to go so y'all we all know why we got random misfires probably why's that probably carbon issues and nobody wants to admit it while it's under warranty so they just what it is these do VW's definitely have a major problem with carbon buildup so all these things together you wonder why would you consider something like this and the straight answer is not all of them have a ton of problems it is it is highly dependent on which car you get which is even more scary some people will say they've had it forever they've had stage twenty tunes with 7,000 horsepower and they never had a problem you know it's just you talk to different people you're gonna get a different answer what I can say is some of the design is questionable why they do certain things the way they do is unbelievable but at the same time VW has responded with extending the warranty on all these new cars so you now have six years seventy-two thousand mile warranties which is a long enough time if you're financing this or leasing it - no should you get rid of this junk by the time the warranty is up if you've got it you're at six year mark and you're under that mileage and you know how many problems you're probably gonna be ok assuming you do your maintenance you change the differential oil you you know pre active preemptively do the spark plugs you know do your carbon clean up on the valve train I would definitely say keep it but if you're having problems right off the bat like some people do lease this thing don't get stuck with it and you've had to do work on these what's the type of that you have to deal with nothing they're bulletproof good answer I had it while I didn't do a turbo on a TIG one with like some low miles on it you know his extended warranty and they try to deny her because she did her own oil changes of course they made her find all her receipts for the oil and filters that she purchased okay so I mean it's just like it's an insurance they want to get out of it carbon issues coils well sometimes aw it's the coils some misfire no it's the carbon and you have problems what did you you were talking about out some people with the Gulf like it wouldn't start because know what coolant that's just I don't know ongoing problem for Volkswagens and Audi's the coolant temp sensors take a crap and fool the ECU and on the car can't start when it's cold Saturday yesterday 215 degrees on a cold start up to luckily it was warm enough out where the car could start but when they threw those past few cool mornings we had they couldn't start the car and usually it's just locked in at a certain temperature so that's kind of the reality of some of these things there every manufacturer has some quirky weird their connectors like one of your viewers met some guy I mean even being brand new it's like connectors break yeah you can't do that when it's 5-10 years old I don't know I would love to see the specialist unplug them without breaking them all the guys that actually designed the connectors no I'm the Volkswagen guys I know they know a trick and my my trick is just a little little screwdriver in there and lever it back just enough but then you usually end up sometimes snap in the little bar then you gotta put your screwdriver sideways or pick in I don't know I've never figured figured out a Volkswagen connector so this is kind of the weird stuff that you're gonna find with these cars and I mean we could probably go on for a long time talking about the freaking intake yeah it is it's got a weird PCV system - I mean it's there's just again different cars have different quirks and problems and you know that's the thing with this you just got to be aware of it before you get into it and just do your research behind the wheel in the new golf r and luckily I've been in and out of all the competitive vehicles in the past pretty much month including the GTI so have a really good feel for just how this car does against the competition but more importantly people are going to wonder you know what are the pros and cons of driving a vehicle like this namely at its price point near forty thousand dollars which is a lot of money so let's get this out of the way when you get behind the wheel of the Golf R you're gonna notice immediately it's much like the GTI it's pretty much the same deal here this has to be one of the best street performance cars you're ever going to get into from solidity quietness smoothness there's this sense that you're not driving some kind of like eco box and that's some of what you're paying a lot of money for the second thing you're going to notice is the steering now everybody talks about steering and it's almost comical but because of the variable gear ratio steering it can go from like ridiculously quick to turn to kind of slower and it depends on the speed it depends on the situation and some of your drive modes and the lock to lock turning is so quick I mean it's one of the most noticeable things behind the wheel of this car now in terms of the inputs you know I kind of talked about the steering it's really quick it just feels great for the most part there's not a lot of feel you know you're gonna get into inputs like the shifter in the clutch the shifter in the clutch most people want to know you know is it direct can you find the gear that you're looking for and I feel like it's take some time to get used to the ship during transmission it's not really a bad thing they're so easy to use and again I feel like they're set up for somebody that's gonna drive this everyday you can go in traffic and there's a lot of give there's a lot of forgiveness in the clutch release it doesn't it's not an on and off switch so when you're going from first a second a third you can always be smooth with this now the penalty there is it feels like it's not connected to anything this is a straight up video game setup in fact like my fan and tech shifter and my clutch pedal feels more real than this car does and you know like it always goes into gear you never have a hard time finding what gear you're going into but it has absolutely no mechanical connection it just feels like a hollow piece of plastic and the clutch just feels like it's really connected to nothing but the benefit mean every shift is smooth there's no trying to be smooth you don't have to finesse the clutch like a lot of cars you don't get awkward or Slammy shifts when you're driving hard this is really more suited and set up to pound around everyday and it feels so good to do that and you know obviously you want a performance machine or for performance hatch and you might be wondering is this thing too soft so let's take it on some more curvy roads at higher speeds and see how the suspension and pretty much everything works and when you start to go tear it up on the back roads or wherever you drive namely on the street your diversity and mode selection is a godsend because when you go from comfort or individual write to race I mean race mode even on the street is really comfortable namely compared to some of the competition it's still less firm than the STI RA it's way less firm than the RS and it's pretty much right on par with the Type R I think that the dry modes work extremely well now as you can see when you're tearing it up one of the biggest things about this car is even when you leave stability control on its tuned so well to help you get through the turns you can tell that the all-wheel-drive system here is really really good all right unlike the GTI where I would literally understeer off the road and there'd be this delay before the Haldex transferred power you can sense that it's doing the same exact thing on this car but instead of kind of cutting the power or kind of feeling this weird jerk in the front you feel that power go to the back more and the best part is it turns it no longer starts to understeer off the road and even in tight stuff like this it's really satisfying when you know you can just push through the turn it feels like it's gonna understeer but on the end of the day it pulls you through the turn with the rear end and that's why this is way better than the GTI the biggest takeaway from driving the Golf R namely on the street now I can tell you flat-out that this vehicle is so it's so approachable it's so accessible I think to so many people that want to get in here and drive fast you feel comfortable doing so like unlike the RS where you're just like man this thing is just it's edgy its quirky it's weird you can't get comfortable a lot of people can't get comfortable in it you get immediately comfortable in here and you can drive it fast the all-wheel-drive system works the manual transmission is really forgiving the clutch is forgiving it just feels like anybody could drive this car and really enjoy it every day and then if you want to go pound around you could now for aggressive driving I turn off the stability and traction control and I think really this is only something that you would have to do on a track or autocross because the default stability control system works so well it's so heavily integrated with the way that the all-wheel-drive system works from the little bit of braking that it does to help get the car to turn in obviously you know there's a whole bunch of other tricks that it's doing in terms of clutch engagement and disengagement but I think it starts to interfere with the handling ability when you're at nine or ten tons and at least you have the ability to kind of disable it and it doesn't seem like it interferes too much it doesn't I mean you can tell it's there but it's not as annoying as it was with the GTI I mean it's gonna understeer at the limit but it's not an understeer that is totally taking you out of your game and I'm gonna talk about some of that with the final thoughts here let's take a look final thoughts on the VW Golf R I'm gonna use one word to describe this duality and that's kind of what you start to get into in performance cars because I did some number crunching and I typically don't work off charts but here it is these are the four performance vehicles with the Veloster n excluded of course because I haven't driven it but you take a look at these numbers and you start to add up what the best car is and the best car for me is not the best car on this list based on how I rated things like street performance overall performance exterior styling some of this is subjective core of course but the tie bar on paper and driving should be the best car I should like it the most and I would say go buy that but that's not the case in fact one of my favorite cars the Drive happens to be the St IRA even though it's not the best car in this list by a long shot and that's what happens when you get into vehicles that are designed to appeal to more than just going from point A to point B and the Golf R is one of those cars in fact on the performance side I don't think it's the best car but in the usability side driving it every day the sense of enjoyment that you get there is pretty much the best thing and it continues to be one of the best Street driven cars really made in this segment it's comfortable the the ride quality is great the adaptive dampers work well the all-wheel drive system is superb the manual transmission doesn't have any grinds or weird problems when it's cold or hot the engine tuning is smooth pretty much everything about this car is great except for the fact that you feel almost nothing emotionally when you drive it at a high level it doesn't connect for somebody like myself who's more driver oriented it's not the greatest drivers car but I would certainly say it's one of the best mixes of all of those things and that's really the kind of takeaway from this I wish VW would inject some soul into it from styling to performance I wish they had a Golf R plus or something that was just more raw but VW has kind of never been like that and if you are somebody that kind of likes that more sterile understated approach to a performance machine this is going to be the car for you and I'm going to tell you that right now I hope that helps take care youI've just finished up a lengthy video on the VW GTI now it's time for the Golf R now you're probably waiting for some type of sarcastic comment how I've had to carry a code reader around with me or I needed a flatbed on standby and I'm sorry to disappoint I've needed neither of those for this car you now you've seen the exterior montage and I'm gonna tell you something when I first saw this in person I thought this is supposed to be some type of sports car hatchback you have to be kidding me it's so under styled it just seems so bland and people will say well it's mature it's grown-up well I kind of get that namely if you take a look at the Civic type-r and you go running away it that's one extreme this is the other but if you're somebody that likes that understated look this is definitely going to tickle your rectum now the biggest and most welcome update is the full LED headlamps in the front which are self-adjusting they've ditched the xenon bulbs next this has the optional 235 Series Continental tires which are in my opinion excellent on here it gives you great grip and they don't ride like concrete which I was surprised everything else is you know standard Golf R stuff you have this black glossy trim on the lower half of the car which is gonna be a nightmare to clean and the quad tip exhausts take a look at the hatch area now my buddy Slade said you know my mom wants to go on a date with you can you believe that I said yeah why not I'm game so I picked her up in the Golf R and I said mrs. K how do you like it she said well I'm a little concerned my ex-husband had an Equinox who's always in the shop but it hauled everything I needed and I said well what do you want to put in here and she said well I'm concerned it's not gonna haul in my books I said baby where we're going you're not gonna need books put her in the passenger seat she fell asleep in like three minutes took her to the library and she was utterly shocked at all the space in here the way the seats folded down I mean she couldn't even contain herself and she's a closet case archaeologist so there's a lot of stuff I learned that day let me tell you all right the interior space there's a few schools the thought about this the first being I think this is going to hold up extremely well over time in terms of design in 10 years you're gonna look back and think well this is a classic interior space the door panel design the handles the upper - the lower parts there's just not a lot of gimmicks in here they didn't throw in yellow or green accents or anything just off the deep end but at the same time that's the controversy it's very monochromatic it's greenly sterile and devoid of any personality but again that's a huge pro to this it's going to age well with the exception of the glossy black plastic I don't get it I keep talking about this in every video and it I feel like the design departments in these cars in these car studios now are just like oh what's everybody else doing because I can't come up with an original thought anymore it's just the dumbest material for an interior space now back to the good things the seats the Golf R gets these extremely supportive leather seats with a high bolster that isn't like cement you can get in here they're pretty pliable and they do hold you in pretty well and they're not some type of race seat it's not trying to be a hardcore track seat it's just a little bit more supportive than a standard one so when you're whipping it around you're not sliding all over some people may like it others may not the driver's seat is electronically adjustable which is great the passenger seat is kind of half in half which is strange to me but that's what it is the HVAC controls do not have to they're not tied to the touchscreen you can do all your functions without ever touching the touchscreen which is one of the best designs the infotainment much like the GTI it's the panasonic derived head unit and the audio system is splendor but it's really Panasonic all of that works extremely well if this is one of the faster infotainment you're ever going to find I still don't like the fact that it's so bright even though it's an IPS panel which means you have better black levels and your gauge cluster is also a digital screen in this car much like the Audi's you can customize it you can configure it in the daylight it looks great but at night much like all screens it's way too bright you can't dim it down enough and then I wonder my biggest question about these screens is you know let's say you have this car for five or six years and I worked in the tech field around thousands of displays that were on all the time they either had burn-in issues or they'd have dead pixels or strange ghosting problems or problems with brightness uniformity and that's something I'm really curious to see how these things hold up over time and then of course the cost to replace them now the interior space as a whole is the same as the GT I was just subtle differences like the shift knob is no longer a golf ball it has some type of carbon fiber wrap to it the armrest you can't open it it's locked out from the factory because this is a German import and why they couldn't have the dealerships do PDI's to take the screws out is beyond me so that's something you're gonna have to do but they make up for it in here with so much attention to detail the flat-bottom steering wheel feels great the door pocket areas are felt or carpet lined so when you put hard plastics in there it doesn't rattle around as much the build quality and fit and finish in here is got to be an 8 out of 10 and that's why you're gonna enjoy this car for years to come and that's why so many people love it so much and from a non fanboy perspective I could see myself owning a car like this and driving it every day alright enough of that let's head into the shop and take a look at the technical aspects of the Golf R it's here the golf are mmm so impressed you are impressed this is more of what we saw with the GTI it's on the MQB platform which is Volkswagens bread-and-butter everything well not everything but they're driven with the same thing they've been use it for 15 or 20 years yeah it's this is how and I talked about this with the GTI and the Tiguan this is how they're able to mass-produce cars so well there's there's they're basically giant Legos and when you master this like they have and like what Toyota's doing now you can have a car that rides amazing and the golf is just a good example of how well you can if you do it right from the start this is one of the best riding cars and it's segment and there's not a ton of fancy stuff here either to do it you know in terms of no it's basic as hell yeah with the Gulf are there are some differences you got a big sway bar you got a bigger swing and rear yep the suspension has been changed you have adaptive Monroe dampers made in Spain and I constantly talk about adaptive dampers being a negative thing for most companies not here they they make them worthwhile soft it has a comfort mode comfort mode is a true comfort mode it doesn't ride like it doesn't ride like oh okay comfort mode is hard and then you go to track mode and it's like beat your butt it's not the comfort mode the other day I had we had a 1995 Lincoln Town Car and that thing was Comfort well yeah well ok it'll never be comfort mode like that but it's usable you know there's a definite difference which is really nice on the road for a car that you want to drive more aggressively you can really use this as a daily driver the next thing you're going to notice on driving in the Scot is it has a variable gear ratio steering rack 2.1 turns lock to lock and it will go from 9 5 to 14 1 in terms of steering changes and you definitely notice this in like a parking lot you're like holy that this thing turn / quickly you know I mean I like it definitely you know some cars you don't notice it as much but this one you definitely do the next thing that you're gonna notice before we get to the back Scott is something important this is completely German made the other golf's in North America are made in Mexico the GTI and all the base ones the engine is made in Hungary but the transmission and a total assembly is made in Germany so if you're somebody that wants a German made Volkswagen this is one of those so that's kind of a pro if you look at it that way the next thing that you're gonna see is much like on the GTI you have a front-wheel drive Haldex front differential now of course this is all-wheel drive that's why you get the Golf R but BorgWarner makes the front differential and it operates almost identically to the GTI now BorgWarner is a massive OEM and you see it working on cars all the time they are they make everything they make turbos they make differentials they make bearings they make everything yeah so that there they pretty much could probably make a car if they wanted to but they're smart enough not yeah exactly their bread-and-butter selling parts to companies that don't want to make their own stuff alright the Gulf are one of the primary reasons why you would buy this and I'm gonna say just straight I wouldn't even consider the GTI after I drove this because all the problems that the GTI had with terminal understeer a weirdness with the Haldex on the front is solved by having four wheels driven now the Haldex on the rear is interesting because it's a electro-hydraulic lee actuated system using multi-plate clutch so this is and the ECU is over here so the ECU is looking it's connected to the front half of the car and when you it sense this wheel slip in the front it instantaneously couples this entire setup this will actuate the hydraulic fluid slip and on slip the clutches and it will take 50% of the torque up to 50% of the tour to the rear and because those clutches can slip it can send power to each wheel as you need it and it will also use the stability control system to break the innermost wheel to get the whole system working right what does it have competition mode it doesn't know competition mode unfortunately but it has race mode which you can consider to be competition mode now people talk about well what's how's the stability control can you turn it off and I've tried it with it on and off and I feel like it's still there but it's it has to be because all of this is electronically controlled via sensors so even if you turn off stability control it still needs to get data from the front wheels to the back to understand how to transfer power I mean come to split the power equally to balance the car out so really with a system like this there's no way to just really go I'm totally analog and you know that's a pro or con depending on who you are the all-wheel drive system is capable of like I start to say decoupling itself it will run in front-wheel drive mode only and it will only drive the rear wheels during an event a cornering event or a loss attraction so it is extremely efficient you don't lose a lot of fuel economy with this but you have the rear end on tap when you need it it sounds like your kind of day alright the last thing to talk about is something simple this car is 0.2 inches lower than the GTI so you're getting extra performance and there's been some changes to the toe links as well so that is why you are getting extreme performance with the Golf R I would say extreme performance enhanced performance yeah yeah Scott under the hood what do we got some TSI our power yep 2-liter turbocharged ei eight eight eight this has been recycled reused except for the Golf R we have more power and torque because they have completely changed the cylinder head design including the the pistons even though that's not really the hood but there's internal changes here it has don't you over rev it it will contact the head so be part attack yeah okay good point it has cool the EGR it has a different turbocharger different tuning obviously to go with all of that and this has to be one of the best tuned modern for poppers I've driven where it's really smooth all the time perfect idle obviously this is new 9,000 miles on it there's no weirdness there's no hesitation there's no revving it really really is great to drive this now let's talk about some of the negative aspects of this motor Scott yeah you can lift that off for this it has a different high pressure fuel pump in America I'm not quite sure why and I need to do more research on this but we're not getting dual injection motors here we're still just getting direct injection only and when I posted that this car was going to be on in a video finally some of the patreon said can you please talk about the blockage is a piece of yes talk about the fine print of that so I'm gonna do that Volkswagen in recent history has had some problems with quality and some of it is just in their choice of parts which we were talking about this has an electronic water pump which is a pretty common failure point the hell Dex pumps tend to go out and need to be replaced if you're driving like a maniac the high-pressure fuel pumps will fail and has problems with carbon build up things like spark plugs failing prematurely check engine lights for misfires or random misfires weird stuff to go so y'all we all know why we got random misfires probably why's that probably carbon issues and nobody wants to admit it while it's under warranty so they just what it is these do VW's definitely have a major problem with carbon buildup so all these things together you wonder why would you consider something like this and the straight answer is not all of them have a ton of problems it is it is highly dependent on which car you get which is even more scary some people will say they've had it forever they've had stage twenty tunes with 7,000 horsepower and they never had a problem you know it's just you talk to different people you're gonna get a different answer what I can say is some of the design is questionable why they do certain things the way they do is unbelievable but at the same time VW has responded with extending the warranty on all these new cars so you now have six years seventy-two thousand mile warranties which is a long enough time if you're financing this or leasing it - no should you get rid of this junk by the time the warranty is up if you've got it you're at six year mark and you're under that mileage and you know how many problems you're probably gonna be ok assuming you do your maintenance you change the differential oil you you know pre active preemptively do the spark plugs you know do your carbon clean up on the valve train I would definitely say keep it but if you're having problems right off the bat like some people do lease this thing don't get stuck with it and you've had to do work on these what's the type of that you have to deal with nothing they're bulletproof good answer I had it while I didn't do a turbo on a TIG one with like some low miles on it you know his extended warranty and they try to deny her because she did her own oil changes of course they made her find all her receipts for the oil and filters that she purchased okay so I mean it's just like it's an insurance they want to get out of it carbon issues coils well sometimes aw it's the coils some misfire no it's the carbon and you have problems what did you you were talking about out some people with the Gulf like it wouldn't start because know what coolant that's just I don't know ongoing problem for Volkswagens and Audi's the coolant temp sensors take a crap and fool the ECU and on the car can't start when it's cold Saturday yesterday 215 degrees on a cold start up to luckily it was warm enough out where the car could start but when they threw those past few cool mornings we had they couldn't start the car and usually it's just locked in at a certain temperature so that's kind of the reality of some of these things there every manufacturer has some quirky weird their connectors like one of your viewers met some guy I mean even being brand new it's like connectors break yeah you can't do that when it's 5-10 years old I don't know I would love to see the specialist unplug them without breaking them all the guys that actually designed the connectors no I'm the Volkswagen guys I know they know a trick and my my trick is just a little little screwdriver in there and lever it back just enough but then you usually end up sometimes snap in the little bar then you gotta put your screwdriver sideways or pick in I don't know I've never figured figured out a Volkswagen connector so this is kind of the weird stuff that you're gonna find with these cars and I mean we could probably go on for a long time talking about the freaking intake yeah it is it's got a weird PCV system - I mean it's there's just again different cars have different quirks and problems and you know that's the thing with this you just got to be aware of it before you get into it and just do your research behind the wheel in the new golf r and luckily I've been in and out of all the competitive vehicles in the past pretty much month including the GTI so have a really good feel for just how this car does against the competition but more importantly people are going to wonder you know what are the pros and cons of driving a vehicle like this namely at its price point near forty thousand dollars which is a lot of money so let's get this out of the way when you get behind the wheel of the Golf R you're gonna notice immediately it's much like the GTI it's pretty much the same deal here this has to be one of the best street performance cars you're ever going to get into from solidity quietness smoothness there's this sense that you're not driving some kind of like eco box and that's some of what you're paying a lot of money for the second thing you're going to notice is the steering now everybody talks about steering and it's almost comical but because of the variable gear ratio steering it can go from like ridiculously quick to turn to kind of slower and it depends on the speed it depends on the situation and some of your drive modes and the lock to lock turning is so quick I mean it's one of the most noticeable things behind the wheel of this car now in terms of the inputs you know I kind of talked about the steering it's really quick it just feels great for the most part there's not a lot of feel you know you're gonna get into inputs like the shifter in the clutch the shifter in the clutch most people want to know you know is it direct can you find the gear that you're looking for and I feel like it's take some time to get used to the ship during transmission it's not really a bad thing they're so easy to use and again I feel like they're set up for somebody that's gonna drive this everyday you can go in traffic and there's a lot of give there's a lot of forgiveness in the clutch release it doesn't it's not an on and off switch so when you're going from first a second a third you can always be smooth with this now the penalty there is it feels like it's not connected to anything this is a straight up video game setup in fact like my fan and tech shifter and my clutch pedal feels more real than this car does and you know like it always goes into gear you never have a hard time finding what gear you're going into but it has absolutely no mechanical connection it just feels like a hollow piece of plastic and the clutch just feels like it's really connected to nothing but the benefit mean every shift is smooth there's no trying to be smooth you don't have to finesse the clutch like a lot of cars you don't get awkward or Slammy shifts when you're driving hard this is really more suited and set up to pound around everyday and it feels so good to do that and you know obviously you want a performance machine or for performance hatch and you might be wondering is this thing too soft so let's take it on some more curvy roads at higher speeds and see how the suspension and pretty much everything works and when you start to go tear it up on the back roads or wherever you drive namely on the street your diversity and mode selection is a godsend because when you go from comfort or individual write to race I mean race mode even on the street is really comfortable namely compared to some of the competition it's still less firm than the STI RA it's way less firm than the RS and it's pretty much right on par with the Type R I think that the dry modes work extremely well now as you can see when you're tearing it up one of the biggest things about this car is even when you leave stability control on its tuned so well to help you get through the turns you can tell that the all-wheel-drive system here is really really good all right unlike the GTI where I would literally understeer off the road and there'd be this delay before the Haldex transferred power you can sense that it's doing the same exact thing on this car but instead of kind of cutting the power or kind of feeling this weird jerk in the front you feel that power go to the back more and the best part is it turns it no longer starts to understeer off the road and even in tight stuff like this it's really satisfying when you know you can just push through the turn it feels like it's gonna understeer but on the end of the day it pulls you through the turn with the rear end and that's why this is way better than the GTI the biggest takeaway from driving the Golf R namely on the street now I can tell you flat-out that this vehicle is so it's so approachable it's so accessible I think to so many people that want to get in here and drive fast you feel comfortable doing so like unlike the RS where you're just like man this thing is just it's edgy its quirky it's weird you can't get comfortable a lot of people can't get comfortable in it you get immediately comfortable in here and you can drive it fast the all-wheel-drive system works the manual transmission is really forgiving the clutch is forgiving it just feels like anybody could drive this car and really enjoy it every day and then if you want to go pound around you could now for aggressive driving I turn off the stability and traction control and I think really this is only something that you would have to do on a track or autocross because the default stability control system works so well it's so heavily integrated with the way that the all-wheel-drive system works from the little bit of braking that it does to help get the car to turn in obviously you know there's a whole bunch of other tricks that it's doing in terms of clutch engagement and disengagement but I think it starts to interfere with the handling ability when you're at nine or ten tons and at least you have the ability to kind of disable it and it doesn't seem like it interferes too much it doesn't I mean you can tell it's there but it's not as annoying as it was with the GTI I mean it's gonna understeer at the limit but it's not an understeer that is totally taking you out of your game and I'm gonna talk about some of that with the final thoughts here let's take a look final thoughts on the VW Golf R I'm gonna use one word to describe this duality and that's kind of what you start to get into in performance cars because I did some number crunching and I typically don't work off charts but here it is these are the four performance vehicles with the Veloster n excluded of course because I haven't driven it but you take a look at these numbers and you start to add up what the best car is and the best car for me is not the best car on this list based on how I rated things like street performance overall performance exterior styling some of this is subjective core of course but the tie bar on paper and driving should be the best car I should like it the most and I would say go buy that but that's not the case in fact one of my favorite cars the Drive happens to be the St IRA even though it's not the best car in this list by a long shot and that's what happens when you get into vehicles that are designed to appeal to more than just going from point A to point B and the Golf R is one of those cars in fact on the performance side I don't think it's the best car but in the usability side driving it every day the sense of enjoyment that you get there is pretty much the best thing and it continues to be one of the best Street driven cars really made in this segment it's comfortable the the ride quality is great the adaptive dampers work well the all-wheel drive system is superb the manual transmission doesn't have any grinds or weird problems when it's cold or hot the engine tuning is smooth pretty much everything about this car is great except for the fact that you feel almost nothing emotionally when you drive it at a high level it doesn't connect for somebody like myself who's more driver oriented it's not the greatest drivers car but I would certainly say it's one of the best mixes of all of those things and that's really the kind of takeaway from this I wish VW would inject some soul into it from styling to performance I wish they had a Golf R plus or something that was just more raw but VW has kind of never been like that and if you are somebody that kind of likes that more sterile understated approach to a performance machine this is going to be the car for you and I'm going to tell you that right now I hope that helps take care you\n"