Yahoo Autos 2023 VW Golf GTI Review: Will It Dog?
The 2023 Volkswagen Golf GTI has a lot of features relished by driving enthusiasts like a manual transmission, a good dose of torque, and decorative flourishes that help it stand out in a sea of staid commuter cars. It also has some of my dog’s preferred package items: a high roofline, easy ingress, and a center console that’s easy to climb over.
Bramble the dog and her canine cadre had a fine time in this car, though I have to admit I was a little underwhelmed by the experience behind the wheel. It mostly delivers on its promise of practicality plus performance, but I wasn't really able to get emotionally invested in the GTI the way I thought I would pawing through the spec sheet. We'll talk more about this in the review.
Meanwhile, welcome to Will It Dog, The Drive's car review series for canine owners. Here we'll look at what a VW GTI is like to live with if you have dogs and point out any specific aspects that help or hurt its case as a dog taxi. We'll focus on the car's physical attributes when it comes to carrying animals rather than driving dynamics but provide insights there too.
Our main test dogs Bramble, Indi, and Silas are littermates; half Golden Retriever (dad) and half Australian Shepherd (mom). Bramble's the smallest at 40-odd pounds while her brothers are about 60 pounds apiece. They're energetic animals but comfortable with car rides, harnesses, and travel.
2023 VW Golf GTI Specs for Dog Owners | |
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Interior Materials and Layout
For a sporty car, this is a pretty upright hatchback—the hood feels short and the driving position feels high compared to, say, a tenth-generation Honda Civic hatch which feels a little lower and slopier. The VW's architecture makes for great visibility, and the rear hatch is very steep which yields you a lot of usable cargo space.
The cargo bay behind the rear seats is not particularly deep, but it is tall. You can lower both back seats or just half of them, to create room for large items like a dog kennel (which we'll discuss in more detail shortly).
All the seats are wrapped in a nice and robust-feeling cloth. The front seats are nicely balanced between supportive, sporty, and comfortable though the backs feel a little more like an afterthought. VW's signature plaid inserts are the cockpit's primary beacons of personality in an otherwise drab sea of black plastic.
The display and driver interface are basically all digital—screen gauge cluster, screen center controls, and the few remaining buttons feel more like single-function touchscreens than switches. I’m sick of this trend in general but was pleased to see that VW took some advantage of this open platform to create some cool-looking and original-feeling gauge cluster layouts rather than just throwing some columns of numbers in front of you as most modern cars seem to.
The plastics on the door and dashboard are definitely a disappointment, though. It’s just black on black on black, with no interesting shapes or surfaces whatsoever. Seems like whoever was in charge of designing the physical cockpit saw the seats and the screen and figured they had the interior vibes box ticked so they went ahead and clocked out. Luckily we didn’t see any scratches or claw marks on any interior surfaces during our doggie test drive, but I would be very cautious about covering everything within the dog’s reach if I bought this car.
Climbing In and Out
Ingress and egress, for both people and animals, is exceptionally easy. That’s another benefit of the car’s shape—it’s not a long way down into the seat nor a climb upwards no matter how small your paws are.
The tailgate is a little higher than the rear door of course, but generally, this car is user-friendly to a huge range of body types and dog breeds. Especially among sporty cars.
Driving With the Dog
At normal get-around speeds, which is what I normally limit myself to with animals onboard, Bramble liked riding in the back and had plenty of space to get her snout out the open rear windows. The front seats are designed in such a way that she could also get her nose on my shoulder easily which was pretty cute.
The center console is so low that our animals could get their paws on it easily, and if your dogs aren’t buckled in, you might find them sneaking into the front if you look away for a second.
