VW's Epic New Golf R Is Ferrari Fast And Ridiculously Good Looking

It's a Golf that takes 4.9 seconds to hit 62mph. Welcome to a new level of face-reshaping everyday transport

18 May 2015

Ever wanted a practical everyday hatchback that can hit 62mph as fast as a Ferrari 355, or a TVR Cerbera? The answer is obviously yes, and that makes today a very good news day.

Give the new 296bhp Golf R a DSG gearbox to chew on and it’ll monster the 0-62mph sprint in just 4.9 seconds. Remember, this is a car capable of taking your missus furniture shopping. Manual versions will take 5.3 seconds, which is still rapid… but it doesn’t start with a 4.

It looks like a serious a piece of kit. Check out the quad-exhaust layout, unique in the Golf range. Forget the old R32’s cheeky twin central-ish pipes – this is a new layer of awesomeness. Fingers crossed they shoot flames on high-revs downshifts and sound like a dozen bears wrestling a chimera… but sadly they won’t, because as ever the Golf R is a four-cylinder effort.

It’s the same engine as you’ll find in the GTI, but with upgrades to the cylinder head, exhaust valves, valve seats and springs, pistons, injection valves and turbo.

Underneath the car you’ll find a part-time four-wheel drive system desperately trying to put a Focus RS’s worth of power down onto the road through 225-section tyres, and you’d have to say it’s likely to do a much better job of it than the front-wheel drive pretenders.

When you’re bumbling along like a nun the rear axle decouples via a central clutch to save fuel, but when you want all 296 horses to kick a road in the head the rear wheels hook up as well for maximum traction and maximum hoonage.

VW says 40mpg is just about possible in the manual version, with closer to 41mpg on the table with DSG. We don’t think that’s too likely, but since it sits 20mm lower than the regular Golf and 5mm lower than the GTI on uniquely tuned springs and dampers, it does at least look the dog’s banana.

It should be a complete weapon up a twisty road, with just 2.1 turns of the steering wheel taking it from lock to lock. That’s almost as fast as a Ferrari 458’s rack. We can’t wait to test it.