About 3 months ago Volkswagen confirmed that the hotted up Golf R, previously unavailable in North America, will be coming to Canada in 2012. Now that we’re officially one year closer, Volkswagen has let some info out of the bag. There’s good news and bad news.
I’ll give you the good news first: the Golf R will only be available with a 6-speed manual. I know, I know, their DSG shifts quicker on paper, but let’s face it -that’s only useful if you plan on racing your Golf R and I would wager that most won’t take their Golf R’s to the track. In which case, having a more involved weekend drive with the six-speed manual makes more sense. Oddly enough, the European Golf R gets the choice of manual or DSG. And admittedly 50% of GTI sales in the U.S. are DSG automatics.
Now for the bad news: the North American version of the Golf R will be less powerful than the European version. The Euro version gets a 2.0 litre turbocharged 4 cylinder which makes 270 horsepower and 258 pound feet of torque. We will ge the same 2.0 litre unit, however ours will be de-tuned to 256 horsepower and 243 pound feet of torque. Still, that’s 56 more horses than the GTI and it’s about 250 pounds lighter than the recent R32, so it’s unlikely that the Golf R will disappoint anyone, but it kinda sucks knowing that the car is capable of more yet we’re not getting it. Expect 0-100 times in the 5.9 second range.
Volkswagen offered up no reason for the horsepower decrease.
[Autoblog]
