Volkswagen Golf GTI review

Heir to the throne. The next in the dynasty. No hot hatch has a greater heritage than this. A Golf GTI should be all things to all people: the quintessential do-it-all family car with the ability to turn into a proper little sports car when the roads get twisty.

Unfortunately, when VW launched the Mk8 Golf in late 2019 it introduced a few problems…

Was the GTI affected too?

It certainly was. All Mk8 Golfs arrived with a distinct lack of buttons in the interior and a replacement 10-inch touchscreen that worked on its own time. Or rather didn’t work at all a lot of the time. Underneath said touchscreen were touch-sensitive sliders to control the media volume and cabin temperature, but VW didn’t bother to illuminate them so you couldn’t use them at night.

Sportier versions of the Mk8 also arrived with haptic touch-sensitive buttons on the steering wheel too. They were utterly dreadful and combined with the laggy touchscreen they let the GTI down hugely.

Luckily, there’s now a facelifted Mk8.5 Golf and a corresponding GTI, and Volkswagen claims it has listened to our gripes. 

What’s new for the facelift?

Well, as is the norm for facelifts there are new light signatures and sharper front and rear bumpers. Grrrr. Doesn’t look like the politely-spoken, well-turned out older brother of the family any more, does it? In fact, that’s even more true of the GTI Clubsport with its extra toothy bumper and pronounced rear wing. The facelift also brings a light-up VW badge on the front bumper and the teledial wheels are back. Hurrah!

The biggest changes come on the inside, though. The Mk8.5 gets a new 12.9-inch touchscreen that’s apparently powered by a faster processor. Said screen gets a new menu system that’s said to be easier to operate too (more on that over on the Interior tab of this review), while the touch sliders have finally been illuminated.

And look! A steering wheel with actual physical buttons. Perhaps VW heard our cries.

Give me some stats…

The Mk8.5 GTI is still based on the MQB platform and still uses the same ‘EA888’ 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo engine, although the standard GTI has had a power bump from 242bhp to 261bhp. It’s still front-wheel drive too, although there’s bad news for purists because VW has dropped the standard six-speed manual gearbox. Yep, it’s seven-speed paddleshift DSG only now.

The Clubsport gets the same 296bhp as before, plus stiffer springs and dampers, bigger yet lighter brakes and more negative front wheel camber. You can also spec something called the ‘GTI Performance Package’ as an option, which adds an Akrapovic exhaust system, 19-inch wheels (18s are standard) and ‘Drift’ and ‘Special’ drive modes.

It also lifts the electronic speed limiter so that the Clubsport can hit 168mph on the Autobahn. Imagine how sci-fi that all would’ve seemed to the engineers who set up the 110bhp Mk1 Golf GTI back in 1975…

How much will it cost me?

A fair bit more than that Mk1 all those years ago, that’s for sure. There’s more detail over on the Buying tab, but in the UK the Golf GTI now starts at £38,900. Clubsport prices kick off at £41,655 before options. Oh, and remember that since the Mk8 was introduced the Golf has been five-door only. 

GTIs are the Porsche 911 of the hot hatch world – they don’t tend to change the game, they just buff and refine their act until it’s so crushingly competent in other areas it’s almost unfair on the opposition. The Mk8 mostly kept what we loved about the last decade’s worth of GTIs; solid refinement and superb driveability, but added more opportunity for back road misbehaviour. However, it also scored a serious own goal with the interior.

The Mk8.5 improves things massively. The usability isn’t perfect, but the infotainment is much improved, and Volkswagen has chucked in an extra 20bhp for good measure. It drives just as well as the pre-facelift car. You can be neat with it and marvel at the precision or be a bit of a yobbo without sensing the car is rolling its eyes and wishing you’d ruddy well grow up. If anything, the experience is a bit too placid/unremittingly competent, and if you agree with that, but still want those Golf qualities, steer yourself towards a GTI Clubsport. 

Is it the definitive hot hatchback in 2024? No, because the market has broadened out to the point that no one car can claim that any more. Instead, what VW has done is broaden the Golf's offering by aiming the Clubsport at more hardcore rivals such as the Civic Type R, while the 4WD R takes on Audi's S3 and the Merc-AMG A35. It's a convincing approach, although we're still mourning the base-spec, manual-gearboxed GTI.