VW Golf R Mk8 – long-term review

As you, dear reader, are well aware, I am not a fan of the current VW Golf’s interior, It’s lazy, cheap, frustrating and sometimes downright dangerous. Volkswagen should be ashamed it ever went into production, sack anyone who was responsible with immediate effect, and yes, it is absolutely a perfectly good reason not to buy a VW Golf Mk8, R or otherwise. 

However…

This does not mean we simply give up and grumble about it until Wolfsburg comes to its senses and updates the Golf with a dashboard that doesn’t feel like it came out of a pound shop Christmas cracker.

Oh no. We look for the little pinpricks of light in the darkness that hint VW hasn’t totally taken leave of its senses. 

And thanks to TopGear’s Common Sense correspondent-in-chief, Paul Horrell, I have a doozy for you. It concerns the heated seats.

I’ve not been using them really. Partly because the Golf R has fabric seats as standard and they don’t get as chilly in winter as cow-skin, but mostly because activating them is a three-prod journey into the creaking touchscreen. Life’s too short. And precious. I’ll have a cold arse and keep my eyes on the road, thanks. 

And then my saviour telephoned. It was Paul, fresh from another odyssey into the instruction manual for his Cupra Leon Estate which – keen students of the car industry will be aware – shares many components with the Golf R. Not least, a cousin of its horrid touchscreen and touch-sensitive climate controls. 

“Go and sit in your Golf”, requested Paul. I did as I was told. “Switch the car on.” Affirmative. “Now, instead of looking for the heated seat menu, simply tap the hot and cold sections of the temperature gutter with two fingers.”

I formed my left hand into the famous Churchill V-for-victory gesture, reached out into the unknown, and prodded the plastic. Instantly, the screen confirmed level three seat heating had been selected. My bottom roasted. 

“Now tap it again. Same two fingers.” I obeyed. The same action now decreased the amount of warmth from level 3, to 2, to 1, and off. O, frabjous day!

Salutations of joy were exchanged down the phone with my equally warm-posterior’d colleague. We’d done it. Cracked the system. Found the loophole. Unlocked heated-seat paradise just in time for Christmas, with a secret handshake that’s almost as good as the simple unhidden button you got in the old Golf, and activated with one finger, not two.

Now, you’re probably thinking ‘you’re a fool, why didn’t you go looking in the manual for this?’ The answer to that is I never look in car manuals, because I subscribe to the theory that a car should be intuitive enough that you don’t need to read its life story to suss out simple commands. Mostly, they are.

What baffles me is why Volkswagen never thought to pop a little widget in the screen that, maybe the first or second time you’d delved all the way into the heated seat menu, appeared and said “Hey, there’s an easier way to do this, next time just tap my temperature slider with two fingers. Happy haemorrhoids!”

But no-one thought of that. Which, given they forget to illuminate these very areas so they’re useable after dark, probably isn’t all that surprising.