Volkswagen Golf R – Review, Specs, Pricing, Features, Videos and More

Here are two of the hottest hatches on sale today, the Volkswagen Golf R and the Toyota GR Corolla.

Both drive all four wheels, have five doors, six manual gears, and at least 300 horsepower. But the similarities end there. The GR Corolla is rally-inspired and puts performance above all else, while the Golf R is a more premium, track-tuned compact. Both approaches are fun, but which is better?

To find out, we’ll spend hours driving the cars on the track, city streets, and twisting country roads. As a follow up to our Best Performance Car AutoGuide Shootout brought to you by WeatherTech, once again, we’ll spend plenty of time at Toronto Motorsports Park. The ultimate goal? To see which car puts a bigger smile on our face, and more importantly, keeps it there after a day of driving.

Read the full review here.

Spoiled. That’s what we are. Flat-out spoiled. Just look at what we’ve gathered together for the latest Best Performance Car AutoGuide shootout brought to you by WeatherTech.

At our disposal is a Honda Civic Type R, Toyota GR Corolla, Volkswagen Golf R, and Hyundai Elantra N. All four vehicle are based on sensible compact commuters, but have incredible levels of power, performance, and thrills behind the wheel. Although they may all target the same mission, they’re actually quite different.

Body style, cylinder count, and drivetrains differ from car to car. But more importantly, each car feels different to drive. Each has its own character and charm. We honestly could see ourselves owning any one of the following four cars. But this is an AutoGuide Shootout and a winner must be chosen. So we spent a week driving these high performance compacts back to back on city streets, the highway, and the track at Toronto Motorsports Park.

Read the full comparison here!

About 25 years ago, a certain adult beverage company ran an ad campaign. It welcomed folks to the years of their lives where they were now mature enough to appreciate the brand’s pilsner.

The campaign was a bit of a rallying cry for those that had gotten older, wiser, and had more discerning tastes. The targeted audience was a mature set that no longer wanted the same watered-down slop favored by frat kids. If I apply that same logic to performance cars, then the 2022 Volkswagen Golf R is my sophisticated, mature enthusiasts’ choice.

For years I have always appreciated and respected the Golf R. But as a youngster, I believed I needed something that felt rawer to drive. Cars like the Subaru WRX STI or Mitsubishi Lancer EVO. All the pops, bangs, squeaks, rattles, and general lack of refinement gave drivers a more visceral experience. Right? Right?

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Volkswagen celebrates 20 years of the Golf R with a special edition.

The Golf R line screamed onto the scene 20 years ago, with the fourth-generation Volkswagen Golf. Six-cylinder power, and all-wheel-drive, the original Volkswagen Golf R32 sat at the top of the Golf food chain, surpassing the legendary GTI in power and performance. The powertrain may have changed over 20 years (going from six cylinders to a turbocharged four-cylinder), but the Volkswagen Golf R has remained a really fast, AWD hot hatchback. A limited run of 500 special edition Golf R 20th anniversary edition models will be made just for Canada.

Read the full article here.

Cars should be fun.

I tell everyone who will listen that I don’t really belong here—I’m a motorcycle journalist, see? I’m not sure how I wound up in this stew of brands and cars and new perspectives, yet here I am. It has something to do with the Canadian newspaper industry, I think.

And then, there I was (as all good stories begin), on the dreaded North Carolina Dragon (Highway 209), one of the gnarliest roads in America, chasing another journalist into a bumpy, downhill, blind, decreasing radius corner at a speed that would give my high school driving instructor a brain embolism, thinking “hey! I like cars.”

The cars? The much-anticipated Mk8 Volkswagen Golf GTI and Golf R, cars closer to a motorcycle with doors and a roof to anything I’ve driven, marvels of technology that with few exceptions have all the features (and then some) a die-hard GTI fan could want. Let me tell you more.

Click Here to Read the Review