VW Golf R Mk8 – long-term review

This is the third and final fast Golf we’re welcoming into the Top Gear Garage in 2021. We’ve lived with both flavours of GTI. Now it’s the turn of the R.

Overkill? Well, here are my two theories why not.

Number one: this may be the very last Golf we ever run as a Top Gear long-termer. Now Volkswagen itself has created an all-electric rival for its seminal hatchback in the humdrum shape of the ID3, what future for the Golf Mk9, or 10?

I suspect VW has so much goodwill built up in this sub-brand, the Golf will live on as a sort of retro tribute act, stretched over the same sort of skateboard EV platform as the next ID3, ID4 and so on. It’ll be less space-efficient and aerodynamic, but it’ll ease the ‘Voltswagen’ transition.

By the time the Mk8 is replaced by a ninth Golf, surely it will have ceded VW hatchback rights to the ID3 and been retired to a petting zoo for well-liked middle-of-the-road hatchbacks.

Secondly, and more importantly for now: this is the Mk8’s last chance to prove that it is demonstrably, in fact, actually improved over the Mk7.

Standard Golfs? Ruined by the touchy-swipey-yucky interior, but not enough of a step-on in other areas to compensate. GTI? More agile perhaps, and in the case of the Clubsport, grippier, angrier, and way faster. But, somehow you sense they’re now more of everything, without ever being palpably better.

Has the R upped its game? Not with massive power (316bhp is pretty low-rent for a superhatch these days), The drivetrain is a different story though.

When I took an early Golf R on a lap of Top Gear’s patented Nordhampshliefe, I found that the Drift Mode tech – the rear differential which can actively lob power at an outside wheel to create an artificial Instagram-friendly powerslide – is hard at work even when the Golf R isn’t in yob mode. It’s a car you can adjust and trim on the throttle – if you really concentrate.

The rest of the time though, it’s just a Golf. So, are nuggets of handling genius enough to uncork some latent Golf brilliance here?

And, what luck, one’s arrived to live with in November. Just as the nights draw in, the weather forecast for the next six months in Britain is summarised as ‘grey’, and most roads disappear under a thin veneer of rotted leaf mulch, drizzle and black ice. Great!

If ever there was a moment for an all-wheel drive hyper-Golf to shine, to come good, to make us fall for this final combustion-powered VW hatch, this is it. Cometh the hour, cometh the, erm, R.

I’m more sceptical about the £3k optional titanium exhaust, myself. As tested, this perilously close to £50,000. And on its first tank of petrol, it averaged 27.8mpg – exactly ten miles per gallon fewer than the slightly lighter FWD GTI Clubsport. Ouch.

So, worth the extra cost to buy and run? Place your bets.