The VW Golf R ’20 Years’ is the most powerful production Golf ever made

Look at the blue wheels! Blue wheels and blue wingmirrors! We don’t usually get that excited about shameless special editions, but even we can’t ignore the fantastic accessories on the new Volkswagen Golf R ’20 Years’ edition. 

We’ll stop banging on about them now though. That would get quite annoying quite quickly, and there’s a strong chance a fair few people reading this will find them abhorrent. If that’s the case, don’t worry, you can have black wheels and black mirrors if you spec your celebratory Mk8 R in Lapiz Blue.

You’ll also be getting the most powerful production Golf ever made, although that statement is slightly misleading given the figure is only up to 328bhp from the standard 316bhp. Hardly revolutionary, and VW hasn’t said if the top speed or 0-62mph time is affected. Still, not to be sniffed at. 

There are a few more changes from the standard Golf R too. You get the Performance Pack as standard on your 20 Years, which means a rear wing, something called ‘R-Performance Torque Vectoring’ and the all-important drift mode. You also get an ‘Emotion Start’ option which will give you a few more revs for some extra noise every time you start the car. 

There’s longer, larger paddles behind the steering wheel (a welcome addition), plus VW says it has worked on the character of the DSG ‘box, so upshifts in Sport or Sport+ modes are now accompanied by a “sporty shifting jolt”. Is that VW admitting it has made the gearbox worse on purpose? Not to worry – we’re all for it. Not so sure on the carbon fibre interior bits and the ‘20 R’ puddle projection, though. 

But yes, it really has been 20 years since VW launched the Mk4 Golf R32. How time flies…