Think the 2022 Volkswagen Golf R is overpriced? You're wrong

“39% price hike is plenty unreasonable. We need to stop being apologists for greedy car companies jacking up prices to crazy levels” came the comment on MOTOR’s Facebook in response to a recent Volkswagen Golf R review. Well, here’s why that comment is wrong.

Some clarification first: I was perhaps being a little mischievous in framing the Golf R as being 39 per cent more expensive than its predecessor. The car I cherrypicked for that particular statistic was a Golf R Grid Edition manual from 2018.

That was a car that had been built down to a price, stripped of its leather seat trim, digital instrument cluster, silver mirror covers, electric driver’s seat adjustment, seat heating, and even the passenger’s seat under-drawer.

60

Should you prefer a more like-for-like comparison, try the very last of the outgoing Mk7.5 Golf R models, which retailed at $55,990. The step up to the new car is then 17.8 per cent.

Yes, you’re getting 10.3 per cent more power now, although dyno tests suggest the actual figure hovers around, yes, 17 per cent more. But can that still be justified? Some readers clearly think not and Golf R pricing seems to be a bit of a hot-button topic.

The first argument in its favour is that the Mk8 Golf R is a very different car to its predecessor, in terms of dynamic capability. The clever all-wheel drive system with dual oil-bathed clutch packs at the back is a very different piece of engineering to that which underpins the Golf 7.5.

60

It’s not a million miles away from the underpinnings of the departed Ford Focus RS which, let’s not forget, cost $56,990 when we ran one as a long termer in 2018 and which proved more than half a second slower than the Golf R against the clock to 100km/h.

The first question we asked when we secured the Golf R was what to compare it to. It operates in a gap in the market between the typical $42-$58k hot hatches like the Hyundai i30N and the Ford Focus ST and the $90-$110k superhatches like the Audi RS3 and Mercedes-AMG A45 S.

Now that the Civic Type-R has temporarily departed the market, there’s not really anything that will beat the Golf R for the money. Not the more expensive Mercedes-AMG A35, not BMW’s M135i XDrive and not even the new Audi S3, with its older chassis tech.

If you’re still unhappy with the price, ask yourself where the Mk8 Golf R should be in the market. At the $63k level of the markedly slower and cruder Megane 300? Come on.

60

When Honda does bring us a new Type R, it may well eclipse the Golf R dynamically, but it plays to a different crowd. And that’s the thing about the Golf R. It has such bandwidth. It’s everyday useable without feeling overly compromised as a result.

At present, you’d probably need to spend $89,900 on a BMW M240i xDrive to put yourself in something that’s similarly capable. That's a 36 per cent uptick in price. And even then, you’d be getting a similar level of dynamic ability at the expense of the Golf’s practicality.

And that form factor is key. Even if you’ve managed to move your thinking to the fact that this is a different car with different capabilities to the Golf Mk7.5, there’s often that residual thought that this is still $66k for a hot hatch. Not that Volkswagen asks $66k for a car that can – in the real world – pull down the pants of most of the $100k sports coupes available today.

60

It’s not perfect by any means. There’s evidence of cost cutting in the cabin and the road noise is ever present, especially on coarse chip or open-pore surfaces. The interior haptics are bizarre and there are some odd ergonomic decisions. The drift mode is a bit of a gimmick as are the array of sound symposer modes.

Yet despite all this, viewed in terms of pure all-round capability – performance, dynamics, finish, practicality, technology, equipment; the lot – name me anything in the market at present that gets close to the Volkswagen Golf R for $66k. You can’t because it doesn’t exist.

And offering something better than all of your rivals for less money would appear to be all the pricing justification Volkswagen needs. Judging by demand for the new R, it seems that many agree. As ever, your mileage may vary.