Volkswagen Golf R review

Is the Volkswagen Golf R a good car?

The Volkswagen Golf R sits at the pinnacle of the VW Golf range and lords it over lesser hatchbacks with a level of performance that very few cars can match at this price. The latest edition has upped its game in terms of the all-important driver enjoyment as well, with the level of configuration available in the various driving modes meaning it can be adjusted to suit a range of scenarios on road and track. The Mk8.5 VW Golf package isn’t perfect but the Golf R pushes it to a highly impressive extreme. 

How much does the Volkswagen Golf R cost? 

If the Volkswagen Golf is the do-it-all family hatchback, the R is the do-it all Golf. No other model in the range has the breadth of capabilities you get from the R and, you’ve guessed it, that’s reflected in the price. At £42,745 for the hatchback, and another £1,400 if you fancy the even more capable Estate, this all-wheel-drive super-hatch sits at the pinnacle of the Golf range and mixes with a host of highly talented, high-performance rivals. 

The Volkswagen Golf R sits above the front-wheel-drive Volkswagen Golf GTI (261bhp) and its hardcore Golf GTI Clubsport (296bhp) offshoot, offering more power (328bhp) courtesy of a more highly strung version of the familiar 2.0-litre, four-cylinder turbocharged engine. VW Group sister brand Cupra offers hot versions of the Leon hatch including the Cupra Leon 333, which has the same engine and 4x4 drivetrain as the Golf R but is only available in estate form. Elsewhere in the group, Audi’s S3 uses similar running gear to the Cupra, and only costs £2,500 more.

Volkswagen Golf R buyers are also likely to be considering BMW’s M135i and the Mercedes-AMG A 35, which tick the 4x4 tech box but are down on power. The Honda Civic Type R is another highly capable, but front-wheel-drive, option at a premium of around £5,000.

This Golf R benefits from the proceeds of the Mk8.5 facelift that covered the whole Golf range in 2024. New LED headlights, revised rear light clusters and an illuminated VW badge on the nose mark out the exterior. Inside, and more significantly if you’re thinking of buying one, the much maligned VW infotainment system has been comprehensively revised to improve the user experience. The Golf R now has DCC3 adaptive chassis control control as standard and an even bigger arsenal of driving modes that govern this clever suspension system, together with numerous other settings.

There’s only one Golf R trim level as such, but Volkswagen is offering a Golf R Black Edition with darkened exterior badges, black exhaust tips and black brake calipers behind black 19-inch Estoril alloy wheels. The Black Edition also includes the R Performance Package that’s a £1,915 option on other Golf Rs. This gets you a higher top speed of 168mph, an enlarged roof spoiler, a GPS-based lap timer and a G-meter. There are also two additional driving modes: Drift for sideways shenanigans on track, and Special, which is optimised for the Nürburging Nordschleife circuit.  

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The Golf R has quite the set-up underneath. The 4Motion all-wheel drive system features R-Performance torque vectoring and XDS electronic differential locks to distribute the power both front-to-rear and left-to-right. It can send up to 100 per cent of the available drive to the outside wheel in corners, tightening the line and controlling understeer. 

Then there’s the DCC3  (Dynamic Chassis Control) system and the Intelligent Vehicle Dynamics Manager working away in the background to optimise damping, power distribution, steering and various other parameters within the R’s five main driving modes – Comfort, Eco, Sport, Race and Individual. With the optional R Performance Package, there’s also Drift mode and a Special setting designed for the Nürburgring as well – the icing on a pretty complex cake.

Sure enough, on the road the assortment of driving modes has a major say in how the R behaves. In the Comfort setting the ride is firm but well damped so that the smooth German roads of our test route didn't upset the car’s composure. As you move up through Sport to Race, things get a lot more jiggly and the firmer end of the 15-step scale available in Individual mode is best left for track, or tooth extraction, purposes. On UK roads, we suspect most will keep the car locked in the softer settings. 

The engineers aimed to deliver greater precision and driver engagement with the Mk8.5 updates and have largely been successful. The steering is light enough to make town driving simple but gains weight as you up the speed, and according to the drive mode selected. 

There's a tonne of grip and absolutely no issues using the power to blast out of bends, but the Golf R does feel alive and communicative in those fast corners. This sense of connection is more obvious in the hatch than the Estate, which has a 49mm longer wheelbase and is 355mm longer overall. The more practical car feels more stable and slightly less playful at the rear end as a result.

Despite this enhanced feeling of agility over the pre-facelift cars, the Golf R is still brutally efficient point-to-point and supremely easy to drive quickly. Its 328bhp and 420Nm maximum torque all the way from 2,100rpm to 5,500rpm allow it to pick up its heels at a prod of the throttle almost regardless of gear and engine speed. 

If you work the gearbox, the optional (£3,315) Akrapovic exhaust pops and burbles away, partially making up for the less than sonorous engine note. The 0-62mph sprint takes 4.6 seconds (or 4.8 secs in the Estate), while the top speed is limited to either 155mph, or 168mph with the R-Performance Pack. 

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A VW Golf R is never going to deliver the running costs of a mainstream Golf or even a standard Golf GTI, but it shouldn’t be the wallet-shredding monster you might imagine. It returns around 33mpg on the official WLTP combined cycle, 7mpg down on the GTI but competitive with the BMW M135 xDrive and Mercedes-AMG A35, despite having more power.  

Residual values for the Golf R are rated at around 40 per cent after three years and 36,000 miles. You can expect an Audi S3 to hang onto over 50 per cent of its value over the same period, which seems a good justification for making the upgrade, and a Mercedes-AMG A35 should manage 43 per cent.

Insurance is group 33, which seems very reasonable for the kind of performance on offer. The Mercedes-AMG A 35 is in group 34 and the BMW M135 starts in group 29. 

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You can spot a Mk8.5 Volkswagen Golf R by its LED matrix headlights, standard illuminated VW badge and extended lower bumper with enlarged air intakes that let the radiators peep through. It’s a suitably imposing front end but the extensive use of shiny black plastic on that bumper does look a little low rent. 

At the rear, fresh light clusters make an appearance and the same piano black plastic is used more sparingly on the chunky splitter with quad exhaust pipes poking through at the sides. VW also introduced a fresh set of beautiful, but optional, 19-inch forged alloy wheels with the Mk8.5 facelift. Called Warmenau, these multi-spoke affairs are 20 per cent lighter than comparable items so they help improve handling, too.

The interior design is very similar to what you’ll find in other Golfs. The main things that mark the R out are the sports seats with their big side bolsters, and the special graphics on the display screens. There was a carbon-fibre trim piece running across the dash on our test car but that’s a £790 option, and lower down there are hard plastics in evidence. Overall, the R struggles to feel quite as special inside as some of its rivals.

Sat-nav, stereo and infotainment

Being the flagship model, the Golf R gets the larger 12.9-inch Discover touchscreen that’s an option on many lesser Golfs. More importantly, it’s running the latest, heavily updated VW infotainment software. The system is noticeably quicker to respond – even if we were occasionally forced to tap icons twice to get our inputs to register – and has more key functions on permanent display, including the climate controls. VW’s philosophy of keeping physical buttons to a minimum still holds but there’s no doubt this is a significant improvement over the set-up in the pre-facelift Mk8 Golf. 

In front of the driver is a second 10.25-inch Digital Cockpit Pro instrument cluster, a slick visual interface with more bespoke Golf R graphics. If you choose the optional R-Performance Pack, this is home to a GPS-based lap timer and a G-meter for those with fighter-pilot aspirations who want to take advantage of the R’s considerable talents as a circuit car. 

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Practicality isn’t a particularly strong point of the VW Golf R. The big seats eat into rear legroom to the point that sitting behind a tall driver would be difficult for even smaller adults. The likes of the Ford Focus ST and Honda Civic Type R fare better here, but at least the Estate variant partially addresses some of these ills with a slightly longer wheelbase and a bigger boot.

You get a very useful 611 litres of boot space in the Golf R Estate but only 341 litres in the hatch. That figure is 33 litres down on even the front-wheel-drive models in the Golf range, although what you gain in those cars seems to be below the removable boot floor. The BMW M135 has a 380-litre boot. 

The driving position in the Golf R is first class with plenty of adjustment in the seat for taller drivers to stretch their legs – as long as there’s nobody sitting behind – and a steering wheel with lots of reach adjustment. That wheel has large paddle shifters behind it for the seven-speed DSG gearbox – more prominent than those you get in Golf GTI models. The GTIs do have an advantage here though, because while they got new steering wheels with physical buttons as part of the facelift, the Golf R’s wheel retained the touch-sensitive buttons that are so easy to inadvertently press when you’re driving. It was deemed too expensive to re-engineer the Golf R’s wheel because it has a special ‘R’ shortcut button to the driving modes and is unique to the car as a result. 

Storage space in the cabin runs to deep door pockets, a small glovebox and a collection of pots in the centre console. There are ISOFIX points for child seats on both of the outer rear seats with the clips hidden under plastic covers. 

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Although the VW Golf R itself is a little too specialist to make an appearance in our Driver Power customer satisfaction survey, the wider Golf range did put in a showing. Just not a good one. 

The Mk8 Golf came dead last in the overall Driver Power 2024 rankings but the ray of light here is that a lot of the negativity centred on the infotainment system, which has been significantly improved in the Mk8.5 car. Volkswagen as a whole came 29th out of the 32 manufacturers featured and will be looking to improve that performance in future.

Things look far healthier for the VW Golf R when you consider safety. The entire Golf range has a five-star Euro NCAP rating awarded in 2022 and the safety kit fitted as standard on this flagship model is comprehensive. 

Front, side and curtain airbag systems are supplemented by a raft of active safety technology. There’s post-collision braking that stops the car after an accident to lessen the chance of a secondary impact, driver-fatigue detection and an advanced lane-keeping assist with Road Edge Recognition.

The Travel Assist system has camera and radar sensors that allow assisted driving in certain conditions, while Side Assist and Rear Traffic Alert monitor approaching vehicles with those same radar sensors. Of course, the Golf R’s 4x4 traction should provide a further safety boost when road conditions get slippery.

Volkswagen Golf R alternatives

The Golf R’s most obvious rivals from outside the VW Group are the BMW M135i, which offers 302bhp for around £1,000 less, and the Mercedes-AMG A 35, which also has 302bhp and costs £1,600 more. In addition, there are the Cupra Leon and Audi S3, fellow VW Group products that use similar 4x4 systems and 328bhp engines to the Golf R’s, although the Cupra is only available as an estate in this format. The Audi may prove particularly tempting, given that it starts at only £2,500 more than the Golf R.

Prospective R buyers may also be inclined to glance upward to the very top echelon of the hot hatch genre. However, cars such as the £49,000 Honda Civic Type R, the £59,000 Audi RS 3 and £66,000 Mercedes-AMG A 45 are some way distant in terms of price, as is the all-electric Hyundai Ioniq 5 N at £65,000.