For as long as I’m fortunate enough to do this job, the first step of every review will always be the same, no matter the car: get inside and press every button. This is how people tend to formulate their earliest impression of any vehicle, after all. Bless its forced-induction heart, the Golf R offers a limp handshake.
That’s mostly because the dashboard barely has any buttons to press. What you might’ve heard is true: the Golf R’s cabin is a cold and clinical place to be, both convoluted and minimalist to a fault. But once you’re in motion, it has a funny way of making you forget about all of that.
Full disclosure: The kind folks at Volkswagen dropped off a 2022 Golf R equipped with the dual-clutch automatic to play around and make lots of noise for a week. I was so happy my tester came in the best color, Lapiz Blue.
What Is the 2022 Volkswagen Golf R?
There’s only one way to get a Golf in the United States anymore: fast. At least Volkswagen allows you to decide how fast. The Golf R is the more audacious of the two choices, owing to its two additional driven wheels and extra 74 horsepower compared to the lesser GTI. It starts at $45,185, including destination, and the only option you really have to consider is whether you want to shell out $800 to replace the standard six-speed manual gearbox with a dual-clutch automatic.
See, both transmissions are mated to the same 315-horsepower, turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder. However, if you opt for the paddle shifters, torque rises from 280 lb-ft to 295. I tested the dual-clutch, and I’ll talk a little more about that later.
So the Golf R is a little pricey and very powerful, but you wouldn’t really know either of those things from looking at the exterior. This has always been the sleeper hot hatch; the one that never seemed terribly fussed with whether anyone knew of its sporting pretense, aside from the individual driving it. If you miss the details — the big, slotted brake rotors and the subtle “R” badge on the liftgate — the top Golf looks 95 percent like any other. Sensible, unassuming, undesigned.
And that’s okay! I still can’t so much as glance at the rear of an FK8 Civic Type R without rolling my eyes, so I’ll applaud the Golf R’s restraint. Volkswagen ignored the obnoxious design trends infecting every performance-minded vehicle and penned a five-door hatch that quite literally looks like it doesn’t want to be perceived.
How Does the 2022 Golf R Drive?
It’s a shame how the interior has dominated the conversation around the Golf R. Sure, I get it — all of its enthusiast contemporaries are so good now, hot hatch rivalries are won and lost in the details. But you don’t buy a car like this for its luxury and technology; you buy it for its ability to surprise you. How can a vehicle this sensible also be so sharp? The Golf R will leave you awash in that blissful state of déjà vu over and over again.
It’ll happen the first time you select Sport mode and stand on the accelerator. The Golf R feels faster than 315 hp and 300-ish lb-ft should, and Volkswagen’s Direct Shift Gearbox deserves all the praise. Whether you’re flicking the paddles or leaving those decisions to the computer, this rapid-shifting seven-speed really feels like it’s extracting the maximum from that turbo four-cylinder at all times.
It’s impressive that the powertrain feels so responsive, considering the turbocharger (lag is almost imperceptible) and the heft of all-wheel drive. Volkswagen’s twin-clutch rear axle can funnel up to 50 percent of the power to either rear wheel — enjoy validating that claim on a rain-soaked parking lot or ice lake — and the standard Dynamic Chassis Control system employs adaptive dampers to perfectly suit this two-box terror for every occasion.
Drive modes transform the car’s character. As you select more aggressive profiles, the suspension firms up, the steering adds heft, the DSG’s computers keep you in lower gears for longer and the exhaust note deepens with delightful off-throttle pops. Better yet, with Individual Mode you can custom tweak each of those parameters separately to find your optimal mix of performance and comfort.
The result is flat cornering, telepathic steering and a ride that conforms to you. Other performance compacts, like the Toyota GR Corolla I recently drove, are certainly more raw and emotive. For better or worse, the Golf R feels comparatively premium and refined. You end up feeling a little insulated from the action, but nevertheless dazzled by the agility of a vehicle that can so easily defy its corporeal mass.
How Is the 2022 Golf R’s Interior?
Before we go any further, I want to be clear: None of the annoyances I’m about to relay are dealbreakers. They don’t undermine the Golf R’s spirit, or undo any of the wonderful things you experience while driving. They’re just little frustrations — admittedly, lots of little frustrations. I’ve made them into a list because, frankly, it’s easier to cover them that way:
- Every button on the steering wheel spokes is capacitive — touch sensitive, not a physical button. If you like to drive with your hands on the spokes, as I do on long highway drives, the volume, track skip, instrument cluster display, and pretty much everything else on the steering wheel will develop a mind of its own. Know this.
- I’ve already discussed this at length, but the dual-zone climate and volume controls below the primary display — which are, again, capacitive — are not backlit. That means they go invisible when you’re driving at night.
- The positioning of some of the software buttons in Volkswagen’s infotainment system UI is atrocious. The shortcut for the climate page on the bottom-left corner is dangerously close to the capacitive pad for temperature changes. It affects CarPlay too, because of where Apple likes to put its Home button. Half the time I wanted to return to the primary CarPlay screen, I ended up raising the A/C temperature by a degree.
- Speaking of climate stuff, the ventilated seats are pretty weak.
- The touchscreen is genuinely awful at distinguishing taps from swipes. Sometimes it’s buttery smooth, other times it’s inexplicably laggy. You never really know how it’s going to behave.
- On one occasion the backup camera started intermittently flickering with a black screen while I was reversing. Also, the side mirrors never once auto-lowered in reverse during my week with the car, even though I’d turned on that function in the vehicle settings.
Update: Commenter Saigon_Design pointed out a little quirk of VW’s system: the mirrors will only lower if the adjustment toggle is turned to the left or right side. Some forum posts I’ve seen corroborate this. Good to know!
- Also, on one occasion, as I was pulling away from an intersection after the traffic signal turned green, a massive, red, indecipherable icon briefly overtook the center of the instrument cluster along with an ominous chime. I later discovered in the owner’s manual that this was an “Advance Warning” notification tied to Volkswagen’s Front Assist emergency braking system. Basically, the car detected a possible collision and “prepared itself” (whatever that means) for emergency braking, even though there was plenty of room between me and traffic ahead, and no such emergency existed.
- The confirmation tone, if you choose to use it, is so loud! Admittedly there might be a way to turn it down — I searched and searched and found nothing.
Going into my time with the Golf R, I expected the interior fit and finish to be its undoing. But the leather bucket seats, with their blue accents and piping and decent bolstering, are nice to look at and lovely for long journeys. The plastics, while hardly supple or pleasant to the touch, are completely reasonable.
The rear door cards on the Golf R have gotten more negative attention from enthusiasts and potential customers than probably any other rear door card in automotive history. I don’t get it. They look 95-percent identical to the front. The back of the Golf R is a nice place to be — there’s ample headroom and you even get your own digital climate controls!
Sure, the dash is pretty lifeless from a design standpoint, and there’s a wealth of empty plastic surrounding the gear selector for no discernible reason. Indeed, this is no Mazda3 Turbo. But then, the Mazda3 Turbo doesn’t have an ounce of the Golf R’s ability to excite. When you build a performance compact, you have to make compromises — yes, even at $46,000 — and this is how Volkswagen made them.
How the 2022 VW Golf R Compares to the Competition
The Golf R lost perhaps its closest competitor, the Subaru WRX STI, recently. In the interim, something interesting happened: Toyota swooped into what used to be Subaru’s lane and delivered the GR Corolla.
The popular consensus around the Golf R, as far as I can tell, is that it costs too much. And while I’ll certainly agree it’s far from cheap, in practice this is a very different beast from the GR Corolla. When you take that into account, the price Volkswagen is asking feels justified.
Toyota’s hot hatch is an all-around simpler machine — less refined in its dynamics, less luxurious in its ride and amenities. Mind you, that’s not a bad thing, and it helps the Corolla slide in some $8,000 less than the cheapest Golf R with a manual.
But the GR Corolla is meant for someone after the prototypical hot hatch: Loads of grip and sufficient power in a reasonably priced, unsophisticated package, with minimal layers of abstraction between you and the car’s mechanicals. The Golf R loses a bit in visceral, tactile engagement, but gains an entire universe in versatility. It grants you acceleration that would embarrass most supercars from 15 years ago, but also comfort, efficiency and subtlety. Of all the options in this category, it’s the best suited to be someone’s only car.
Of course, if you don’t need all of the creature comforts, the trick axles and the somewhat problematic tech, your options open up. The new Subaru WRX is arguably a class below the Golf R, down on power and lacking a limited-slip differential. It doesn’t help that the nicest WRX you can buy — the $42,000 GT trim — gives you adaptive dampers but forces you to tolerate a CVT automatic transmission. I haven’t happened behind the wheel of Subaru’s latest sports sedan, but my colleague Collin didn’t seem to love his time with it.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the winged figure of the 2023 Honda Civic Type R looming in the distance. But there’s still so much we don’t know about that car. Media hasn’t driven it yet, and it’s unclear where precisely it’ll land in this fight, in terms of price. For what it’s worth, I’m willing to bet it’ll have the finest interior of the bunch — judging from the photos we’ve seen.
2022 VW Golf R: The Verdict
The Golf R might just be the most polarizing car I’ve ever driven. When I ask others who have driven it, they either deride it for its interior frustrations, or knock it for feeling a touch divorced from the drama it’s so adept at creating. Or both! Fans, meanwhile, champion the sophistication of the 4Motion all-wheel drive system and its ability to squeeze every drop of potential out of the EA888 Evo4 motor.
Here’s the thing: All of those straw-people have points. Me? I’d probably take the GR Corolla, because it’s all I need and significantly cheaper — not because I couldn’t live with the Golf R’s dumb climate controls. I could easily adapt, because of what the Golf R gives you in exchange: Everything. Chances are, somebody out there is looking for exactly that.