It’s a little nose-heavy, so you have to really regulate your gear and throttle inputs to get it to squirt around that 90-degree sweeper cleanly. It’s far from imprecise, mind, you just have to wind the wheel around a little more than a current-generation Golf R, and unlike the latest-generation ones, there’s a sample of road feedback from the R32’s wheels. The steering is heavy by today’s standards, and you have to reattune your hand’s inputs to the amount of lock you have to put on when approaching a bend. There’s also the sense that the R32 is actually quite a lazy car to get around a corner. Even on the mostly smooth Austrian hillside roads we were driving on, the R32 hopped over small lumps and crashed over bigger ones.
The R32 got its own suspension setup, with a 20mm-lower ride, bespoke 18-inch alloys from OZ and paint-smear-thin 225/40 tyres and there’s no getting around the fact that that recipe adds up to a firm ride. The Passat W8-derived brakes are good-ish nowhere near as powerful as today’s modern hot hatches but they still have plenty of bite.
#2003 gl golf hatchback interior manual
Downshifting using the manual DSG mode’s fat aluminium wheel paddles shows up the gearbox’s biggest flaw compared to today: it doesn’t like you selecting a lower ratio mid-throttle, momentarily hurling you forward as it cuts the power. You expect the largest lump of power to be around the mid-range, but the car actually eggs you on to wind the revs all the way up to the max power’s 6250rpm, with the DSG ready and waiting to drop the next gear in when you get there. It’s enough to still send a shiver down your spine, especially if you’ve grown up in the era of overly-boosty 4cyl engines that dominate the hot hatch market today.įor this engine configuration, it’s actually quite rev-happy. The VR6 engine booms a lot from inside the cabin but sings more tunefully from the outside, with that familiar tuneful warble that’s almost like a trumpet player has fallen into an industrial-sized washing machine, mid-spin cycle. With the German-spec DSG equipped, the R32 claims a 6.4sec 0-62mph time (0.2sec quicker than the manual and almost as fast as a Mk7.5 Golf GTI Performance Pack) and it feels it. Well it’s not exactly slow, even by today’s standards. Still, the side bolstering comes in handy when you’re going some. The R32’s additions were just enough to perk up a fairly drab cabin, with the seats in particular the stand out point: the part-leather, part-Alcantara pews look the part but are actually a little uncomfortable, with very firm back rests. The heritage car we drove also came with navigation, which after a quick fumble around with it, deducted that it was completely unfathomable, not least because it’s placed really far down the dashboard. R32 highlights include König sports seats, ESP, climate control, rain-sensing wipers and cruise control. It’s as sensible as ever inside and, for the most part, has stood the test of time for what is now a 16-year-old car.
The UK’s first DSG appetite-whetter would be Audi’s Mk1 TT V6 quattro in 2003.ĬAR’s Anthony ffrench-Constant originally drove it back in the October 2002 issue. In the R32’s case, a new six-speed manual was developed to handle the shove and it became the first car in VW Group’s portfolio to use the now-ubiquitous DSG (Direct Shift Gearbox) automatic, albeit in Germany only. The 3.2-litre VR6 was simply a larger version of the tried-and-tested 2.8-litre VR6 VW already had in service, along with the brand’s Haldex-based 4Motion all-wheel drive system. In came the R32 to save the day: ‘the most powerful and sportiest Golf of all time’. The Mk4 GTI was widely-recognised as one of the worst Golf GTIs in the car’s 40-odd year history it felt stodgy to drive, wasn’t that quick and hardly looked like a GTI at all. In the case of the Mk4 Golf, sitting as a halo model above the Mk4 Golf GTI was a good thing. The Mk4 R32 was a 2003 model-year special, designed to sit atop the Golf GTI as an even hotter performance hatch, and was arguably the start of VW’s R line of cars. Would this be a case of never meet your heroes? Let’s take a step back: what was so different about the R32? Among those, the Mk4 R32 in Deep Blue Pearl, was there waiting. While out at the 2018 Wörthersee festival, VW had wheeled out some of its latest performance hatches (read my thoughts on the Golf R with Performance Pack here) and some of its heritage fleet.
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