Yahoo Autos 2022 Volkswagen Golf R First Drive Review | It’s way more fun!
The 2022 Volkswagen Golf R is still the handsome and mature hot hatch it’s always been, but this time around it’s even more capable and extra likely to put a smile on your face. Even if the car doesn’t outwardly look like it, the Mk 8 Golf R is a mammoth change among Golf generations. It brings VW’s little hatchback into the modern world with a touch of abandon and finally uses a proper, high-performance all-wheel-drive system, but is still packaged in the recognizable and friendly shape we all know and admire.
This Golf R is also only one of two Golf variants we’re getting in the United States for this generation. You read about the other one yesterday — the 2022 GTI — but there are no other versions of the Golf on their way. That means no standard Golf hatchback, Golf Alltrack or Golf Sportwagen. It’s hard to complain too much when VW still blesses us with the two spicy versions of its hatchback, but the wagons’ demise will continue to hurt our hearts.
Volkswagen did plenty to this new Golf R to help us forget about everything we’ve lost. The revised EA888 (now in the evo4 generation) 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder makes more power, now boasting 315 horsepower and 310 pound-feet of torque, up 27 and 30, respectively. Power is routed through either a six-speed manual or seven-speed dual-clutch (DSG) automatic transmission. Yes, VW is allowing us to keep the manual, while other markets around the world won’t. That’s abnormal for America to hear, and we’re thrilled.
Where the Golf R turns from an evolutionary vehicle to a revolutionary one is in its all-wheel-drive system. Bid your not-so-sorry goodbyes to the old Haldex-based, family crossover-spec all-wheel drive, and say hello to the new twin-clutch torque-vectoring rear differential. It’s similar in concept to how the drift-tastic all-wheel-drive system in the Ford Focus RS works. This new differential is capable of proper torque vectoring and can send up to 100% of available rear axle torque to either rear wheel. That means extra torque can be directed toward the outside rear wheel in corners to completely eliminate understeer and improve agility in general. It also enables a new “Drift mode” that allows this front-drive-based hot hatch to do donuts by completely overpowering that outside rear wheel, sending you into a purposeful skid. We tried it, and can confirm the donut mode works. The tire smoke was tasty.
VW totally retuned the Golf R’s suspension for improved handling. Spring rates and anti-roll bar stiffness are up 10%. The DCC adaptive dampers are massaged to fit the car’s newfound stiffness and feature more adjustment than we expected. Pop it into Individual mode, and VW gives you a literal slider to adjust how stiff you want the dampers. There are 15 different settings ranging from mega-soft to racecar-stiff. And while it’s near-impossible to tell the difference when you only move it one slot at a time, there’s an obvious difference in ride quality and body control between larger slider adjustments. Beyond the retuning of components, VW uses a new aluminum subframe in front that saves 6.6 pounds and new transverse mounts and hub carriers on the rear suspension.
The Golf R was no handling slouch before, but all the above makes its body control and rigidity that little bit better through corners. The dampers’ sweet spot for street handling is in between Sport and Race mode. And while that may sound more extreme than usual for the street, VW treats “Sport” mode in the Golf R as what we’d typically call “normal” mode in most cars. The R's variable-ratio steering rack helps it change direction quickly, and there is very little body roll. It’s agile in the way that a hot hatch is meant to be, feeling light but dead stable when you lean on it. There’s a special “Nurburgring mode” found within a subsection of Race mode that is specifically designed for the ‘Ring, but also works beautifully for enthusiastic backroad driving. It loosens up the suspension to deal with the Nurburgring’s wonky surfaces, but keeps everything else in full-attack, which is perfect for most public roads.
Much of this car’s newfound agility can be traced directly to the rear differential putting in work. The best feel comparison is to the SH-AWD system found in the Acura TLX and RDX. Those are also front-drive-based, but carry rear-wheel-drive handling characteristics and unique power delivery in corners. In the Golf R, you can physically feel a rear wheel powering you through and out of corners. It’s doing much more than just quelling understeer, too, as it maintains the perfect radius that you set with the steering wheel and accelerates through parts of a corner that would require a toe-based balancing act in high-power rear-drive cars. In a way, it’s dummy-proof. You can irresponsibly smash the throttle in the middle of a corner, and the car will simply sort everything out and provide maximum forward momentum in exactly the direction you want to go.
