VW Golf R Mk8 – long-term review

Our time with the 21-plate Mk8 Golf R is almost up. Its odometer recently clicked over 10,000 miles, but the car arrived at the TopGear.com Garage with 7,000 miles on the clock.

3,000 miles is enough to get to know a car. But 14,000 miles is enough to feel like it’s your fifth limb.

Over eight months in 2014, I did exactly that: 14,000 miles in the Golf R Mk7. It had been specced by our own Tom Ford, but after he was distracted by a big shiny pick-up truck, I got to run it as my daily driver. I’d never lived with an automatic before. Or a car with more than 140 horsepower. Or a car with all-wheel drive. And yet all of a sudden, for a little over half a year, I got to call the hot hatch of the moment my own.

At the time I was living in London, so the R had to do a lot of mooching. Traffic. Speed bumps. Width restrictors. Dodging bus lanes and yellow box fines. Parallel parking. One day I was sat in a right-turn only lane and got sideswiped by a red double-decker bus misjudging his exit from the bus stop. The front wing wasn’t pretty.

In other words, the R had it tough. True daily grind motoring, longing for the weekends when we could escape south London together and it could shine. Get the engine warbling above 6,000rpm. Fire some seamless upshifts through. Squat down hard out of a bend and use that rear-driven axle to claw sensational traction from leafy, greasy roads. As a winter weapon, it was faultless.

In fact, as a car, it was near faultless. The touchscreen was unbuggy – this was before Apple CarPlay, but apart from an annoying habit of interrupting the radio with whatever song was first in my iTunes list alphabetically every time the phone was connected, the infotainment was solid. Though to this day I am sick and tired of the cheerful intro to Vampire Weekend’s A-Punk.

Nothing buzzed or rattled. Nothing fell off. I once had a coolant warning on an exceedingly hot summer's day, took it to a dealer. They diagnosed a sensor that was on the blink, which I'd already cured by the classic ‘turn off and on again'.

In contrast, the new R has been deeply irritating. I find the auto upshift and kick down gearbox behaviour more intrusive. The screens inside are a disaster. I miss the Mk7’s intuitive steering wheel controls and its heater knobs and heated seat buttons. Yes, the Mk8 is minimalist, but I don’t ever remember getting into the Mk7’s welcoming, common sense cabin and thinking ‘look at all these messy buttons’, like a harrumphing Mary Poppins.

The Mk7 sounded fruiter. The headlight switch was easier to understand. You used to get a sunglasses holder in the roof. Now you don’t. Once you start to count them, there are way too many ways VW made the Mk8 Golf worse than the Mk7, not better.

So, would I spend £40k on the new one, or buy a 2014-vintage 70k-miler for £16,000?

Well, put it this way. In the Mk7, I’d miss the 8’s stronger brakes, which produce far less dust than the predecessor did. I’d also want the Mk8’s grippier fabric seats over the optional leather in ‘my’ Mk7, and the Mk8’s all-LED headlights are superior to the Mk7’s xenon illumination. Makes a big difference to after-dark driving, that.

But that’s it. Everything else: the interior, the more grown-up, less plasticky looks, the noise, and the lack of gimmicks – I’d take from the old-timer. And the spare change.

In fact, I’d split the difference and buy a Mk7.5 facelifted version – maybe the estate – and then smile to myself – whether back in London traffic or a brilliant B-road – as the volume control and heater toggles fell easily to hand, and I’ll never once wish for Drift Mode.