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Welcome aboard the seventh generation of Golf GTI
In this new generation vehicle, we get a 220hp
a 2.0L engine and 350Nm for torque
which is quite reasonnable and
even good for a little modern GTI.
As you can hear, this really made me stop talking.
as this is to be said : this little GTI chassis is very good.
Very good, meaning it is sane.
It understeers a little but nothing dramatic
and this happens in wet conditions.
In dry conditions, no issues and
the car remains very sane, well balanced.
Good chassis. Good suspensions.
Nothing to say.
The brakes do not bite enough.
Here, a little bit of understeering
but this remains acceptable.
Let's say we get a good car
that works pretty well.
But there is an issue and it is the gearbox.
As you would expect, the DSG gearbox is good,
no issue on the efficiency and speed point of view when driving in
normal or sport modes.
But there is something I really dislike : the gearbox staging.
This is a 6 speeds gearbox and I would have appreciated a 7
with staging a little bit shorter.
If you get on a racetrack and push really hard
you will find out the third gear ends at about 140 km/h
This is very long, endless and that's a bit annoying.
The engine : 220 hp, 350 Nm as I said,
that's the 2.0L turbo we know
quite well in the *** group.
The engine sounds quite optimized, works well
and is quite expressive.
Its sound is nice, Vokswagen made it well.
The little bursts when shifting the gears are nice,
all of this is well done.
Overall, you get quite a good engine !
Brakes, let's come back a bit on them.
The bitting is lacking when touching the pedal.
You get some endurance and good decelerations,
although those are floating calipers.
What is clearly missing is the incisiveness,
degrading the pedal feel.
A more sporty pedal feel would have been great.
Of course, that would have jeopardized the every day driving
but I wish there was a bigger actuation jump to make it more...
One that bites, more incisive.
That would be more representative of a GTI in fact.
and that would give me a little more
confidence when entering the curves.
Here, there's a lack of little something.
Not so big, but something.
As we're talking about brakes,
don't you think there's something missing there ?
Yup. In fact, there is no manual parking brake lever.
Volkswagen put an electric parking brake in its latest GTI
and I find this... well I'll try not to be too hard but this really sucks.
What I mean is, well, *** ! A GTI is something you wanna play with
and from time to time pull a cable in a curve, or something,
well, I see it that way and here it deeply lacks.
I did not talk about the steering, well a little when
talking about the understeering in greasy curves,
with some angle in the steering wheel.
I was saying the understeering was well corrected
thanks to the steering.
This is true all the time as
I really like the feeling of this steering.
You really feel what happens
or does not happen in the front axle.
Same stuff then : nice work,
we sort things out with this steering.
The seats are good. Good shape.
They would deserve to be a little bit more enclosing but
we'll see that on the Golf R.
The steering wheel is good with its thin wheel,
red topstitching , the GTI logo in the bottom, that's cute.
There are maybe too many buttons,
I would have seen it with less,
to go further in the sporty style direction.
Nevertheless the buttons do not disturb you
when driving in sport mode, which is the least they can do !
The pallets have a good position behind the wheel.
Finally, I do not use them so often
as the Volkswagen group gearboxes are good ones !
They are fantastic gearboxes that
make very well all the work by themselves.
So you get really tempted to let them work like big boys & girls.
The car is really made for a daily use
with high performance in every conditions.
You don't get brutalized by the suspensions,
there is a good balance.
Truth is, there is a good balance
almost everythere, this Golf GTI.
It perfectly fits to the definition of a modern GTI.
To conclude on this GTI : good chassis,
a little bit understeery front axle but well balanced by a good steering,
Brakes that would have deserved to be more incisive
but still work well
A sporty cockpit, without being extreme.
Finally, this Golf GTI fully corresponds to the modern GTI definition.
The meaning is that if you want to find the sporty behavior of ancient GTI back,
You need to look below, in the B segment,
or consider buying on the extreme versions of the C segment.
You know, the versions that say « Hi, I have 300hp ! »
Welcome today in this new « Runs des Garagistes » ...
Hum, well, let's do it again.