Thanks, appreciate the kind words. It was an off the cuff review as I know what it’s like waiting a long time for a car and also how much I appreciated these type of little ‘fixes’ until my own car arrived.
If people like reading them, I’m happy to keep doing them but don’t want to be a forum wind bag! 
Definitely keep it coming. The more the better. Really interesting reading for those of us with similar but different models to relate to and inspiring for those with TCR’s coming. Great reference points, no matter how unstructured, for those who will never get to drive a CSS (self included) and are interested in the TCR.
Not just that, but your wealth of other experience with sports cars gives it all a reference point of how the sporty Golfs hold their own place against these as daily drivers.
To be honest, I have never strayed from a diet of VW and Porsche (in terms of purchasing) so I think many would accuse me of being a fan boy. I don’t think I am in the blinkered way that many people use the term and am honest about shortcomings or irritations where they exist.
I have tried to wander off the reservation a couple of times and add something else to the garage (Mercedes SLS, Audi RS4, Suzuki Jimny, GWagen Professional) but in every single case, the dealer experience was so poor or where they were able to organise themselves to get me a car to test drive, I was left unimpressed with the vehicle itself. The Suzuki Jimny that everyone has been raving about has the roughest engine outside of a Soviet era Lada (actually, the Lada is smoother) and the ‘its only £18k argument’ doesn’t wash as there are cars with better engines and which have higher NCAP scores at and below this price point. The RS4 had zero steering feel. It was ballistic and beautiful inside but the steering was so disconnected from the car, I might as well have been holding on to one of those child toy steering wheels that you connect to the back of a seat. Its unfathomable that a car at that price with an RS badge could have such a fundamental flaw relating to the driving experience.
My dealer lent me the 992 911 (latest generation if you don’t speak Porsche nerd) the other week and I had it for a few days. The car I had was £118k and looking at the 3 year residual on their finance offer to get an idea of depreciation, expected to lose 50% of that value in that term. I don’t buy on finance (other than using it to get discount contribution initially) and if I am spending that sort of money, I am not taking a 50% hit notwithstanding running costs but to spend that and hand it back after 3 years makes no sense to me as an ownership experience. The 992 was an incredible piece of engineering and considered I had one up from the base model in two wheel drive, being able to do 0-60 in just over 3 secs is quite something in a two wheel drive car. No doubt the GT and Turbo S will be significantly under 3 secs. Without going into specifics of which I could write a very long post, the 911 is not a sports car anymore, it has turned into a luxurious tech rich and highly civilised grand tourer which feels heavy when you throw it around. Phenomenal engineering but is it worth 3.5 TCRs? No.
My point via the examples above is that the GTI is a superb car on so many levels and against cars at much much higher price points. Which is why I will always have a GTI in the garage.
Without wishing to clog the thread up further with a long reply it’s really interesting to read your opinions there on some very highly regarded machinery.
With the proliferation of electronics it’s easy to dial in a certain feel to a car from the factory so it surprises me about the Porsche with its pedigree. They obviously know their market though!
At vastly different price points I think there are quite a lot of us here (aside from those on their first Golf and those on possibly their last as they move on to other things) who can be accused of being VW group fans to the exclusion of all else. The thing is most of us do consider carefully other marques only to find the products aren’t any better or more affordable (and a mixture of both) so end up back sat behind a VW group steering wheel once again...
I have a friend I’ve known for very many years who has worked since leaving school in a hire and leasing company. He’s a sales manager and gets to drive just about everything. He’s a totally no nonsense, warts and all type person if you ask him about any car. One week it’s an i8, a 911, a Fiat 500, a 3 series... he gets to pick up the keys to whatever is lying around in their large compound. Yet his own car of choice will always be a Golf GTI if he can nab one. He always says they’re at least as good as cars several price brackets above and can do it all. He’s no fan of the R funnily enough. They have a bad name in the trade as VW products go (which is still above most things!)
As for the points here about throttle pedal feel. It’s the same actual accelerator pedal used across the range so I’ll assume the electronics in it are the same.
The engines are definitely programmed differently. The R far more eager than the original mk7 GTI in response and the CS40 has a fractionally more pronounced keenness again when on boost.
Engine/throttle responses in all these models are good but only once past that initial lag that’s obviously there for some political reason. Most modern vehicles now seem to have that lag from my limited experiences so I assume journalists are conditioned to it. They also probably drive the cars far harder than an average owner does in day to day use as they have limited time to suss out characteristics and limits, plus performance testing. Maybe if journos actually moaned about the dead travel the manufacturers would more or less remove it in “Sport” mode.
