We owe a lot to the Volkswagen GTI. It’s arguably the common ancestor from which all modern hot hatchbacks and sporty compacts arose, and nearly every generation of the model–since 1983 stateside and 1976 elsewhere–has been more potent and more competent than the last.
The 2023 Golf R–the most radical GTI offered by the factory–represents the ultimate form of the …
Fast and Fierce
Thankfully, you’re getting a lot for your dollar here, and if the previous technical specs didn’t convince you, unleashing the 315 horsepower and 310 lb.-ft. of torque from the 2.0-liter turbo-four will end the argument.
The Golf R’s engine has some pleasantly old-school characteristics, with the boost hitting harder than in most modern turbo cars. VW claims peak torque at 1900 rpm, and we don’t doubt that, but achieving that peak torque requires the turbo to be fully spooled. And if you just hopped out of a regular GTI, which barely feels turbocharged, that’ll take a readjustment of your throttle foot on track.
But learning the throttle timing is worth it because the Golf R’s thrust is impressive when it’s allowed to do its job. And that’s the next thing we should talk about, because getting the best possible lap time in this car requires a bit of skill to work around electronic intervention that never quite disappears, no matter how you set the various modes.
Even with the stability control all the way off, which is selectable not through the drive modes but in a submenu in the DIC where you can monitor individual aspects of the car, there’s still some throttle intervention when you really hang things out. The bummer is that the car is very controllable at and even beyond the limit, so feeling that momentary pause in power can be frustrating when you know your slide is completely reasonable.
So we experimented with the settings and drive modes and eventually produced our fastest lap in Drift mode. Yes, that’s exactly what it sounds like: A vehicle once synonymous with front-wheel-drive performance now offers a drift mode.
Each of those drive modes–Sport, Race and Drift–offers its own strategies for steering assist, exhaust note, throttle curve, torque biasing, traction control and stability intervention. Race mode is pretty solid–we’d put a novice out on track in that mode and they’d learn a lot–but it does intervene…
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