This has me confused - the 2022 Volkswagen Golf GTI is actually slower on paper that the previous generation - despite being a new model. That's because it's now slightly heavier than it was before.
Paul Maric tests out the new Golf GTI to see whether it's better than the old one (even if it's slightly slower on paper).
Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More Volkswagen content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/volkswagen
More Volkswagen Golf content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/volkswagen/golf
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 00:51
Interior 02:40
Infotainment 04:37
Safety Tech 06:02
Practicality 06:37
On the Road 11:45
0-100 km/h 18:12
Verdict 19:54
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
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#review #volkswagen #golf #gti
Paul Maric tests out the new Golf GTI to see whether it's better than the old one (even if it's slightly slower on paper).
Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More Volkswagen content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/volkswagen
More Volkswagen Golf content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/volkswagen/golf
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 00:51
Interior 02:40
Infotainment 04:37
Safety Tech 06:02
Practicality 06:37
On the Road 11:45
0-100 km/h 18:12
Verdict 19:54
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!
Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!
CarExpert:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au
Paul Maric:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric
#review #volkswagen #golf #gti
Category
🚗
MotorTranscript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul.
00:01 So we weren't going to review this car
00:02 because it was released ages ago
00:04 and took forever to get to Australia.
00:05 But look, we put a poll out on our YouTube channel
00:08 and you guys wanted it, so I do what you guys want.
00:10 So here is a review of the Volkswagen Golf GTI, the Mark 8.
00:14 This right here is one spec in Australia,
00:16 and Australia is highly specified
00:18 compared to other European markets.
00:20 So it actually comes with a whole lot of standard equipment.
00:23 Starting price is a little over $53,000 before options.
00:27 This competes with things like the Hyundai i30 N DCT,
00:31 the Ford Focus ST, and the Renault Megane RS.
00:35 Today we're going to do a detailed review of this car.
00:37 If you want to skip ahead,
00:38 there are some time codes up on the screen there.
00:40 Or if you're on YouTube, just scroll down.
00:42 We've got some chapters below.
00:44 If you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel
00:46 and make sure you vote in our polls
00:48 so I know exactly which cars to review next.
00:50 Let's talk exterior.
00:52 So you've got six external colors to pick from.
00:54 They're all free of charge except this red,
00:56 which is 300 bucks.
00:58 It's got some nice sort of speckles in it.
01:00 It's a pretty cool looking color.
01:01 So around the front here,
01:02 I think while the new Golf in general
01:05 looks pretty sort of subdued and quiet,
01:07 I love what they've done with the GTI.
01:09 It really stands out.
01:10 You've got this red strip along the top there, GTI badging.
01:14 And I love how this LED daytime running light
01:16 stretches all the way along the front there.
01:18 You've got that new Volkswagen logo,
01:19 a bank of LEDs down the bottom here as well.
01:22 They look really cool as the car approaches.
01:24 Then in here, you have a set of full LED headlights.
01:27 I think it's a really nice and resolved design.
01:30 And I think they've done a really good job
01:31 with that front end.
01:32 So big tick there from me.
01:34 Around the side here,
01:35 we've got a set of 18 inch alloy wheels.
01:38 This wheel design kind of looks familiar.
01:40 It looks very similar
01:40 to the previous generations of the GTI.
01:42 And I think it's a pretty cool looking design.
01:44 It looks like it's sort of carving out
01:45 sections of air as it drives.
01:47 So you've got that sort of reflective bit on the outside,
01:50 a bit of piano black on the inside.
01:52 Big set of red brake calipers there.
01:54 The rotors measure 340 millimetres at the front,
01:57 310 millimetres at the rear.
01:59 And then we have 225 mil wide tyres
02:01 up the front here as well.
02:02 Another GTI badge along the side there.
02:04 You've got an indicator built into that wing mirror.
02:06 Up the top here, there's a panoramic glass sunroof.
02:09 This is part of the luxury pack.
02:11 This also has the sound and vision package.
02:12 So it's kind of fully loaded with equipment.
02:15 I'll run through that a little bit later on.
02:17 Privacy glass.
02:17 And then come around to the back,
02:19 you've got a shark fin antenna.
02:20 The club sport version of this in Europe
02:22 has this big old spoiler,
02:24 but this is just kind of a subdued version of that.
02:26 GTI badging down the bottom here.
02:28 LED taillights, and you've got proper exhaust outlets there.
02:32 So let me know what you reckon about the design.
02:33 I think they've done a really good job with this.
02:35 And it just, I don't know, it looks like a GTI should,
02:38 and that's exactly what you want
02:39 when you're spending that kind of money on it.
02:40 So we're inside the GTI.
02:42 Let's begin with the key.
02:44 Here it is.
02:44 So you have lock, boot, unlock.
02:47 It's got like this grippy material on it.
02:49 Little bit of sort of chromey stuff on the edge there.
02:52 Volkswagen logo at the back.
02:54 It's a proximity sensing key, so pocket.
02:56 And then once you're inside,
02:57 you've got this push button start just here.
02:59 What do we reckon about the styling?
03:00 Well, the Golf 8 kind of pushes the game forward
03:03 in terms of styling, but it stays fairly conventional.
03:06 There's nothing too outrageous here.
03:08 You can see they've gone with soft touch materials
03:11 along the top there.
03:12 The dual screens next to each other,
03:13 but there is sort of a fair smattering
03:16 of piano black around there.
03:17 You can see the gesture control activating there.
03:20 You'll also notice there are no knobs around here,
03:23 aside from yours truly, but yeah, there's no buttons.
03:25 It is all just capacitive touch stuff.
03:27 So you'll notice as well with the seats,
03:30 Golf GTI, Tartan, it's all about Tartan.
03:33 It always has been.
03:34 It's been the conventional Golf GTI thing.
03:36 Well, this car has a couple of option packs on it.
03:38 So we have the Luxury Pack and the Sound & Vision Package.
03:42 So Luxury Pack is around $3,800.
03:44 That includes these Vienna leather seats.
03:46 And to be honest, I kind of just prefer the Tartan.
03:49 This kind of looks, it doesn't really suit this.
03:52 I really think it just needs to be Tartan,
03:54 but with that, you get extra features,
03:55 such as heated and cooled seats,
03:57 and then a whole bunch of other stuff.
03:59 So just make sure if you are buying this,
04:01 you make sure you look into the Luxury Pack
04:03 and get an idea of what has been included.
04:05 This also has the Sound & Vision Package
04:07 that adds a head-up display and a 480 watt sound system
04:10 that I'll talk about in just a second.
04:11 But on the design front,
04:12 I think it is all pretty straightforward.
04:14 Now, what about your touch points?
04:16 Not too bad here.
04:17 And then on the door, it's not too bad either.
04:19 How soft are they?
04:20 Well, we've got our durometer.
04:21 We've tested the main surfaces in this cabin.
04:24 If you want to see how this car compares to others
04:26 that we've tested before,
04:27 have a look at the link in the description.
04:29 Now, build quality.
04:30 This all feels pretty good.
04:35 I like it.
04:36 Let's talk infotainment.
04:38 So you have a 10 inch infotainment system.
04:41 Ahead of the driver is a larger cockpit display,
04:44 but I'll run through that when we go for a drive.
04:45 So I'm just going to focus on this for the moment.
04:47 I mentioned earlier, there's no buttons.
04:48 So all of your shortcuts are down the bottom here
04:51 for climate controls and volume and a power button.
04:54 And then you have another bank of shortcuts over here.
04:56 In terms of the infotainment system itself,
04:59 it can be a little laggy at times.
05:00 Like now it's okay,
05:01 but I have found on a couple of occasions
05:03 when you're flicking between these menus,
05:05 it just can be a little laggy
05:07 in terms of the way that it moves.
05:08 So it's good that it's working now, but not always great.
05:11 On the radio front, you have AM and FM radio,
05:14 no digital radio, which is slightly confusing.
05:16 And this car, as I mentioned earlier,
05:18 has the optional sound system.
05:19 It's a 480 watt, eight speaker sound system.
05:22 It's actually pretty good.
05:23 It gives you a good amount of bass.
05:24 That extra speaker is a subwoofer
05:26 that's mounted in the tire well.
05:29 And we'll have a look at that one later on.
05:30 And then in terms of your inbuilt features,
05:32 you have satellite navigation built
05:33 into the actual infotainment system.
05:36 You can see here it works okay, no dramas there.
05:39 And then you also have smartphone mirroring,
05:41 both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are wireless,
05:44 which is really cool.
05:45 This is what Android Auto looks like.
05:47 Here it is there.
05:49 Scroll up and down.
05:49 That is all really sharp and nice and quick as well.
05:52 And this is your home button just over here.
05:54 And this is what Apple CarPlay looks like.
05:56 So yeah, full screen again.
05:58 That is sharp.
05:59 That is quick.
06:00 Very impressed with that.
06:03 Now let's talk about safety tech.
06:04 So you have autonomous emergency braking
06:06 with pedestrian and cyclist detection.
06:08 You have a blind spot warning system
06:10 built into the wing mirror.
06:11 You have a safe exit assistant.
06:13 You have a lane departure warning
06:15 and a lane keeping assistant.
06:16 Radar cruise control, front and rear cross traffic alert.
06:20 You have both front and rear parking sensors
06:22 and a rear view camera.
06:23 I'll show you what the camera looks like.
06:24 So you can either select the parking sensors
06:26 or the automatic parking assist.
06:28 So if you go there, you can see the reverse camera.
06:31 Not the best quality in the world.
06:32 You can see it's pretty grainy and distorted.
06:35 You can also go for a wider view as well, should you desire.
06:38 Now, what about practicality?
06:39 And we'll start with your charging points
06:41 and your connectivity for your devices.
06:42 You get two USB-C ports up the front here
06:45 and a 12 volt outlet down here.
06:47 There is something interesting though.
06:48 So you have a wireless phone charger just here.
06:50 It sits on a pad there, but they've got a cover for it.
06:53 So if you do any track driving or any fun driving,
06:55 you don't have to put your phone away
06:57 just 'cause you're going for a bit of a blight.
06:59 You can just pop the cover down
07:00 and your phone won't disappear anywhere.
07:02 Now, what about your storage?
07:03 So where's your phone gonna sit?
07:04 It can sit down there in the wireless charger,
07:06 or you can whack it up there
07:07 or fit it inside the cup holders.
07:09 Speaking of cup holders, our coffee
07:11 fits in beautifully just there.
07:13 Keep in mind as well, you can move this out of the way
07:15 and deploy it as required.
07:17 What about bottles?
07:19 Our bottle also goes in there without any dramas at all,
07:21 or you can put a bigger bottle in here, should you need to.
07:24 With rubber teeth on the side,
07:26 you have pockets inside the doors down here.
07:28 They're carpeted as well.
07:29 See if it fits our big bottle.
07:30 I'll try this first.
07:32 Not quite in there.
07:34 Fits beautifully inside the door though, which is great.
07:37 Center console here.
07:38 This slides forwards and backwards.
07:40 You can, I mean,
07:42 it's not the world's biggest one in the world,
07:43 but you can also adjust the height of it.
07:45 So if you want to sit it there, you can do that.
07:47 You've got a glove box over here, reasonably sized.
07:50 And then finally you have some netting down here
07:52 for storing, I don't know, things that go in a net.
07:55 Righto, let's talk comfort.
07:56 So dual zone climate control up the front here.
07:58 Then you have a third zone of climate control for the rear.
08:01 To get access to it, you can either click over here.
08:03 This is where you can access your seat controls as well,
08:06 or click Klima, and then that brings up this menu.
08:09 So similar to the Skoda we reviewed recently,
08:11 the Octavia RS, you can click up on Smart Climate
08:14 to do basic functions.
08:16 You can Classic Climate it to just do it all yourself.
08:18 And then you also have an air care menu
08:20 for purifying the air inside the cabin.
08:22 So I like that setup.
08:25 Just a little bit fiddly to use while you're driving.
08:26 Like there's no easy way to just adjust fan speed.
08:29 You can only adjust temperature as you go.
08:32 I'm gonna then sort of take your eyes off the road.
08:33 So I wish that was a little bit better.
08:35 But yeah, you've got heated and cooled seats here
08:37 for the front row.
08:38 In terms of the seats,
08:39 I really like how much they hug you in.
08:42 Sort of this morning when I was playing around with the car,
08:43 we were doing some sort of faster driving and stuff,
08:46 and they hug you in beautifully.
08:47 So if you do wanna go to the track or something like that,
08:50 they are quite sort of comfortable in that regard.
08:52 They are electrically adjustable here for the driver.
08:55 You can go up, down, forwards, backwards.
08:57 You've also got bolster adjustment as well.
08:59 The passenger side is fully manually adjustable.
09:01 What about your steering wheel?
09:03 This is gonna kind of look familiar to you
09:05 if you've seen some of our other Volkswagen reviews,
09:07 but yeah, the steering wheel looks kind of cool.
09:09 It sits nicely in the hand.
09:10 You've got easy access to the paddle shifters.
09:12 GTI branding down there with a little red strip.
09:15 These buttons, not a huge fan of them.
09:17 I've tried those before in the Touareg,
09:19 and I don't know, they're just really fiddly.
09:21 They're sort of haptic feedback buttons,
09:22 and I can just never get them to work properly.
09:24 So hopefully you get used to them if you own the car,
09:26 but just not a huge fan.
09:28 You can also adjust the steering wheel
09:29 both up and down, in and out.
09:31 And then on our reach test,
09:33 all of this stuff is easy to reach.
09:36 Okay, back seat.
09:37 It is very cozy back here.
09:39 I've got my driver's seat in its standard driving position,
09:42 and you can see that my knees
09:43 are sort of inside the seat at the moment.
09:45 I also have barely any toe room.
09:47 Headroom is okay.
09:48 If you jump over to our i30N review,
09:51 and you can watch that by clicking up here,
09:53 I actually had more room in the i30,
09:54 even though the i30, from my memory, was a smaller car.
09:57 So I don't know whether it's these seats
09:59 that are just super bulky,
10:00 but yeah, I don't really have a great deal of legroom here.
10:04 Now, this is where you access
10:06 your third zone of climate control.
10:07 You've got an additional two USB-C ports down the bottom.
10:11 Unlike the i30N, you do get air vents here
10:13 to keep you cool on an Aussie summer day.
10:16 Matte pockets in the back of the seats,
10:17 and then at the top,
10:18 you've got sort of device holders up there.
10:21 Center armrest here has three cup holders,
10:23 like a little piccolo,
10:24 and then a bigger one and a smaller one.
10:26 So that fits our bottle fine.
10:28 Also, well, it doesn't really fit in the back one, though.
10:31 You can also pop this inside the door,
10:33 also carpeted in there.
10:35 There is a little access nook here to the boot.
10:37 It's like a little ski port.
10:39 And then finally, your two outboard seats
10:41 have ISOFIX anchorage points.
10:43 Okay, cargo space hatchback, what's it like?
10:45 So you open the boot by pushing this.
10:48 That goes just there.
10:49 You have a little over 370 litres here,
10:52 just in its standard trim.
10:54 You've got a 12-volt outlet up the top there,
10:56 lights along the side,
10:57 and then beneath the cargo floor,
10:58 you have a space saver spare tyre,
11:01 plus that is where your speaker sits.
11:03 And then off to the side,
11:04 you've got a jack and a couple of other bits and pieces.
11:06 You then also have the ability to make this a dual-tier floor
11:09 so it can drop down like that.
11:11 Then in addition to that,
11:11 you have storage space off to the side
11:13 and then hooks along the sides here
11:15 and then the back as well.
11:17 Let's have a look at what it's like with our bags in there.
11:19 I'll be keen to see if it fits this suitcase.
11:22 Long ways.
11:23 Nope, that's gotta go sideways.
11:25 So that kind of gives you an idea of that space.
11:28 Get that out of the way.
11:29 So what if you want to expand the space?
11:32 Well, you are in luck.
11:33 You can get rid of this thing, pull that out.
11:35 Then what you can do is drop your second row.
11:41 And then, voila,
11:43 you have a little over 1200 litres of cargo space.
11:45 So we've hit the road in the Golf GTI.
11:50 Let's talk about the engine first.
11:52 So two litre, four cylinder turbocharged petrol engine.
11:55 That may sound familiar
11:56 and that's because it is very, very familiar.
11:59 180 kilowatts of power and 370 newton metres of torque.
12:04 Pretty much exactly the same as last time.
12:06 That's all mated to a seven speed
12:08 dual clutch automatic transmission.
12:10 Now, the reason I point that out
12:11 is because this is a Mark VIII Golf.
12:14 It's a new Golf.
12:15 You would expect it to be sort of bigger, brasher
12:17 and all that sort of stuff in comparison to the old one,
12:19 but it is sort of virtually identical
12:21 in terms of the drive train.
12:22 Where they have tweaked it though is the chassis.
12:24 And we'll run through that later
12:25 when we go for a bit of a sportier drive.
12:27 But what does it feel like behind the wheel?
12:28 So we are in comfort mode at the moment.
12:31 The dual clutch gearbox is really good.
12:33 So Volkswagen has finally managed to sort this stuff out,
12:35 especially in these performance cars.
12:37 And that means when you come to a stop,
12:38 you've basically got just no fussiness.
12:42 You know, with some of the other brands,
12:45 the dual clutches just don't know what they're doing.
12:47 This slips a little bit and then it gets up and moves.
12:49 And then when you aren't just driving along normally,
12:51 if you do give it a punch at any point,
12:53 it's quite responsive and it's not sort of napping
12:56 like again, some of them do.
12:57 Let's talk fuel economy.
12:58 So the official figure is seven litres per 100 kilometres.
13:03 We are currently sitting on eight litres per 100 Ks.
13:06 So it's not a terrible number.
13:08 And when you think about it, this is a sporty car,
13:11 but it is not like a super duper
13:13 sort of high performance hatch.
13:15 So you would expect it to have reasonable fuel economy,
13:18 especially if you are doing a lot of highway driving,
13:20 which we have done with it,
13:21 along with a bit of sportier driving.
13:22 But I like that figure, eight litres per 100 is great.
13:25 What I like ahead of the driver here
13:26 is the ability to change the displays.
13:28 So you flick this button here
13:30 and it gives you the option of going through
13:32 a number of different displays,
13:33 including I like here,
13:35 it's like a really sporty display with GTI listed there.
13:39 And then you can also configure
13:40 what's shown on the screen as well.
13:42 So you can see we've got a little G bubble
13:43 off to the side there.
13:44 So that's a really cool setup
13:45 and it's fun to use while you're driving
13:47 because it lets you see how hard you've been hammering
13:50 and all that sort of fun stuff.
13:52 Now, what about the rest of your drive modes?
13:54 It is a little bit frustrating because to select them,
13:57 you've got to press this button down here
13:59 and it takes a little bit of effort
14:01 to do that while you're driving.
14:02 So you go down and click on that
14:04 and you can choose between Eco, Comfort, Sport
14:05 and Individual.
14:06 So they've kept it pretty straightforward.
14:08 Individual allows you to configure all of your settings
14:10 to the desired mode,
14:11 whereas Sport just goes all out.
14:13 So let's go over to Sport.
14:16 So immediately I can feel the adaptive dampers go firm,
14:18 steering gets a bit heavier,
14:20 it plumbs some more fake noise into the car.
14:23 Punt it through here.
14:27 That is good.
14:28 While it does feel soft around the edges,
14:30 we're absolutely moving at the moment
14:34 and far out, this thing is quick.
14:38 It's actually really strange,
14:40 even though it shares a lot of that drive train
14:42 with the last generation,
14:44 it is remarkable how fast it is.
14:46 You're just piling on speed.
14:48 The body stays nice and flat.
14:50 It does have a bit of body roll in there,
14:52 but it's nothing too crazy.
14:54 Body control over bumps is great as well
14:57 and the brakes are fantastic.
14:59 Brake pedal feel, I think is probably the bit
15:02 that has surprised me the most
15:04 because I'm able to just lean on it.
15:06 It feels confidence inspiring
15:08 and that's pretty much exactly what you want
15:11 when you are sort of pegging along with a bit of pace.
15:14 Holy crap.
15:16 This thing is fast.
15:17 I really was not expecting that.
15:18 In and around town, it feels really soft
15:21 and sort of nimble and agile,
15:23 whereas out here on these faster sweeping bends,
15:26 you can really attack some of these corners at speed.
15:30 It is kind of lost for words actually.
15:33 Okay, we'll get that bumpy section here.
15:34 I'll dial up the speed just a touch.
15:37 That is remarkable.
15:40 We've seen some cars almost leave the ground there
15:42 and we're doing a lot faster than we were in those
15:44 and it is really nice and sensible and compliant.
15:47 Yeah, I've really been surprised by this.
15:50 I was not expecting this to be as capable,
15:52 especially for a front wheel drive car.
15:55 Normally, they're a little soft at times,
15:58 but this really sort of dials that performance up a notch.
16:02 It kind of actually feels very much like the i30 N.
16:04 The i30 N has a harder edge to it,
16:06 but this feels just as capable
16:08 without sort of hurting your back.
16:10 The other thing that I'll mention as well
16:11 is you've got an electronic limited slip differential
16:14 at the front there,
16:15 so it means that when you get to corners like this
16:17 where they're wide sweepers
16:18 and you dial on the throttle,
16:20 there it goes there,
16:21 you arm it down.
16:22 If we didn't have a limited slip differential,
16:25 what we'd find is that the inside wheel would spin up,
16:27 whereas right now it's able to really just level the torque
16:30 across the front axle
16:31 and give you the confidence behind the wheel.
16:34 Yeah, I've got to tell you,
16:35 I have been seriously surprised by this.
16:38 Let's talk about what I don't like though,
16:39 and that is how noisy it is in here.
16:42 I don't like the fact
16:42 that we're getting fake noise plumbed into the cabin.
16:44 I can kind of hear,
16:46 if I just go quiet for a sec,
16:48 I can kind of hear little cracks and pops
16:51 from the exhaust at times.
16:54 I'll give this a...
16:55 (car engine roaring)
16:58 Which is nice, I think.
17:01 I don't know if we can hear them from outside,
17:02 but from in here, it sounds pretty cool.
17:04 The other thing I notice at times as well is,
17:07 right now my hands are really hot
17:08 and I thought, wow,
17:09 it must just be because I'm engaged and having fun.
17:12 But what I keep doing
17:14 is hitting the steering wheel heater button just there,
17:17 and the steering wheel heater keeps coming on
17:19 and it is really frustrating
17:20 because it's like a couple of clicks to switch it off
17:22 and it is very distracting while you're driving
17:24 to have to start fiddling around with that stuff.
17:27 So not that impressed with that,
17:28 but love the brake pedal feel,
17:30 love the steering feel,
17:31 and tell you what,
17:32 if you found yourself on a nice stretch of mountain road,
17:35 this thing is going to put a big smile on your face.
17:38 Now, what about visibility?
17:39 So out the front, it is great.
17:40 Down the side, it's good.
17:41 The wing mirrors are pretty small,
17:43 but you do have blind spot monitoring built into those.
17:46 Visibility at the rear is pretty good as well,
17:48 so it's all straightforward there.
17:50 In terms of noise though,
17:51 I mentioned when we were doing our sportier driving
17:53 that it was quite droney in the cabin.
17:55 If you do find yourself on a course chip country road,
17:58 there is a lot of noise that's coming into the cabin
18:00 and that's translated through those tires.
18:02 Unfortunately, that, yeah,
18:04 it just gets a little bit frustrating,
18:06 especially if you are doing a longer drive,
18:07 you're going to notice that
18:08 and it will start doing your head in eventually.
18:11 Okay, let's talk zero to 100.
18:13 I'm actually going to walk you through this in person.
18:15 There are a couple of issues here.
18:16 So the official claim zero to 100 time is 6.3 seconds.
18:20 It is slower than the old one,
18:22 which is kind of unheard of,
18:23 and that's because it's heavier.
18:24 So it's heavier by about 30 kilos,
18:26 and that means that if you don't save weight
18:28 and have the same drive train,
18:30 it's going to just become slower.
18:31 So that is pretty disappointing,
18:33 but we do have launch control,
18:34 so I'll run you through how that works.
18:35 So I'm going to put this into sport mode,
18:38 and then what I'll do is go back over here to the main menu.
18:42 I'm going to then put it into limited stability.
18:44 And again, this takes time to do
18:46 'cause there is no button here for me to just do this.
18:48 I've got to go over here to brakes.
18:51 Once we get to brakes, I put this into ESC sport.
18:54 Then what I do is put my foot hard on the brake,
18:56 hard on the throttle.
18:58 It'll come up with launch control program active.
19:00 Then I just let go of the brake,
19:05 little bit of wheel slip,
19:06 and then it propels us up towards 100 Ks an hour.
19:11 Now there is something else you can do here,
19:13 and that is put ESC off, hit confirm.
19:17 ESC switches off entirely.
19:19 Same thing again, except this time
19:20 we won't have traction control intervening,
19:22 so we'll see if that's any quicker.
19:24 It just spins up the wheels when that happens.
19:33 Smoke in the cabin, and then we hit 100 Ks an hour.
19:37 So yeah, we'll check after the edit
19:39 to see which one was quicker,
19:40 but I can tell you which one's more entertaining.
19:42 Finally, let's talk about the turning circle, 10.9 meters.
19:45 Great for a front wheel drive.
19:47 Means you can just zip around
19:49 and you probably won't be having to do
19:51 a thousand three-point turns
19:52 to get your U-turns out of the way.
19:55 So a Golf GTI.
19:56 I tell you what, when I was putting my notes down
19:58 for this to start with, and I saw the price,
19:59 I thought, you have got to be kidding yourself,
20:01 especially after just driving the i30N with the DCT.
20:04 I think that was really the benchmark in the segment.
20:07 But after spending a bit more time with the car,
20:09 it kind of transforms.
20:11 It's great in and around the city.
20:12 It does the low speed stuff really well.
20:14 It's comfortable.
20:15 Yes, it is a little droney at highway,
20:17 but if you put that to one side,
20:19 if you are using it as a daily driver,
20:21 it is not going to do your head in.
20:22 But where it really excels is when you give it a punt,
20:24 the thing absolutely hammers.
20:26 So it's not as quick in a straight line
20:28 as the previous generation,
20:29 but through corners, especially at high speed,
20:31 it feels so nice and balanced and poised.
20:34 So from that perspective, it's really good.
20:36 The price, yes, it is expensive,
20:37 but ultimately that interior feels far better
20:40 than it does in the i30N.
20:41 And the i30N is only slightly cheaper
20:43 without all the options that this car has on it.
20:45 So I don't know, I'm in two minds here.
20:47 Let me know what you think in the comment section below.
20:49 Would you buy this
20:50 or are you buying something else altogether?
20:52 I'm really keen to get your feedback.
20:54 If you did enjoy this video,
20:55 make sure you hit the like button.
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21:01 But until next time, take it easy.