The world is full of affordable cars with kind of gray and white personalities.
But the Golf has always been something more colorful and no Golf more saturated than the Golf R.
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And the first thing I noticed in our Golf R is that let's face it A two liter inline-four with a turbo is always gonna feel like a two liter inline-four with a turbo.
You can get buried under a lack of boost or to tall a gear pretty easily.
So it's a car you gotta stay involved in but that doesn't bother me cause that's why you bought an R. Got a whole mess of power coming on here, right when I need it, as long as I keep the revs up and keep that turbo spool.
Now, we have that DCC adaptive suspension.
I haven't done an AB against the dead steel version, but this car does not suffer from any understeer.
You point it, and it kicks right in that way.
I love the sound this car makes.
But turns out what I'm hearing isn't necessarily just the engine.
There's something up in the cowl at the base of the windshield, an electronic device called the sound actor, which resonates a synthetic growl up through the bottom of the glass apparently.
A lot of folks get in there and unplug it.
I gotta say it's kinda unseemly for one of the last great, honest driving cars, so, I'm sad they put it there.
But maybe the engine doesn't sound very good.
Now I know many of you rue the fact that we don't have a manual gear box in this vehicle.
But I can tell ya this is a super snappy, sharp and quick DSC.
It's got pretty good around town manners with the exception of getting caught flat footed sometimes in automatic mode.
However I still like to have that third pedal just to really get in touch with the simple but brawny honesty of this car a little better.
And despite our 19s and our low profile tires and our firm sport suspension and all the things going on to keep this thing really solid and planted.
Ride quality is really good.
You will have no problem in everyday driving with your R. Since the last [UNKNOWN], this one has 36 more horsepower, yet uses three mpg less on the highway, so it's going the right direction on both counts.
This is a fun little box.
It takes me back to the first golf GTI I drove way back in the day.
This is what it felt like.
That's a good thing.
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