Or it is on the Nordschleife at least, where the 333hp Golf R has outpaced its predecessor
By PH Staff / Tuesday, 23 August 2022 / Loading comments
Volkswagen told us it was sprinkling celebratory confetti on the current Golf R back in May. The headline (‘most powerful Golf of all time’) made for better reading than the small print (the “20 Years” edition would actually only earn an additional 13hp over the standard R), and it’s a similar story with the car’s just-announced Nordschleife lap time.
On the face of it, 7:47.31 is plenty brisk. VW says it betters the previous Golf R’s lap time by 4 seconds, making the anniversary edition the ‘fastest Volkswagen R ever on the Nürburgring-Nordschleife’. Which has a nice ring to it. No match for the Megane R.S Trophy-R or the Audi RS3, of course, but you wouldn’t expect it to be: one is much lighter and specially adapted for the job, and the other is endowed with 400hp.
The problem – if we want to call it that – is that VW can’t declare the “20 Years” the quickest Golf ever on the Nordschleife, because it isn’t. Not quite. The limited-edition Mk7 GTI Clubsport S retains that title with the 7.47.19 lap it set back in 2016. Good news for anyone partial to lightweight, front-wheel-drive, manually geared, three-door hot hatches (i.e. all of us); somewhat less good news if your job is marketing the ‘most powerful Golf of all time’.
Still, what’re a few fractions between friends? VW can still point to an ‘evolution of the most powerful Golf versions over a period of 20 years’ with some validity – not least because it has also confirmed a 4.6-second-0-to-62mph time for the special edition model, making it (by 0.1 seconds) the quickest Golf R yet in a straight line. VW is also at pains to stress that the car gets the R-Performance Pack, Driving Dynamics Manager and R-Performance Torque Vectoring as standard. Which means you get the more oversteery modes.
These include the ‘Special’ setting that was perfected on the Nordschleife by none other than Benny Leuchter – the man responsible for the “20 Years” lap time. “With this car, I can drive here on the Nürburgring and the next stop is then the baker’s or the DIY store. The vehicle is really an all-rounder that can do everything,” noted the tamed touring car driver.
Needless to say, that is the point of the Golf R, and the anniversary car’s tweaked seven-speed DSG and its preloaded turbocharger are merely the icing on a very familiar cake. The same could be said for the car’s lap time, in fact, which won’t be nearly as consequential to its core audience as the Clubsport S’s front-drive record was in the previous decade. Of likely greater significance is the fact that VW has confirmed that it will limit the model’s production period to ‘approximately one year’. So maybe don’t hang around if the “20 Years” had you at hello.
- Megane R.S. Trophy-R vs. Golf GTI Clubsport S
- Volkswagen Golf R 20 Years edition launched
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