To make this report as useful to prospective remappers as possible, I am going to try to be as impartial and objective as possible. Hence, unnecessary and annoyingly subjective hyperbole à la Clarkson will be banished, as will words like ‘awesome’.
Why did I want a remap?
Although very satisfying to drive, the stock car never felt quite sporty enough to me. At motorway speeds in particular, I missed the big torque provided by turbo diesels and putting my foot down at 70mph would only give me average pick-up. Also there was the nagging problem that actual performance never really lived up to the wonderful noise the car produces. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I was disappointed by the 210hp, but having read that VW engineers had designed the 2.0 litre TFSI engine with 300hp in mind, I couldn’t resist seeing what the car was really capable of.
What did the remap involve?
I booked in at an official Revo dealer yesterday for 9:30 am. For the moment, I am not going to reveal their identity, suffice it to say they are in the south east. When I arrived at 9:15, the place was shut – fair enough. I waited until 10am and still nobody had shown up. Hmm, I was smelling the faint whiff of wasted trip! I was just pulling out of the car park when a guy turned up on his motorbike. This turned out to be the owner. After mumbling some half-baked apology for being late, he set to work at what could best be described as a leisurely pace.
Basically, he plugged his laptop into the diagnostics port of my car to read all the relevant data, connected to the Revo server on the Internet and proceeded to purchase and download the appropriate file in much the same way as we might buy a music track online. He then uploaded said file to my car using his laptop and bingo. The whole process (operating at a leisurely pace, with cigarette breaks and jokes with his mates/colleagues) took about 50 minutes.
I was told that, should the VW dealer accidentally wipe out the remap, they will put it back in for me for a nominal £20 fee. He also explained that the Revo remap doesn’t actually inject any extra data, it merely removes some of the restrictive parameters VW put into the ECU, freeing the engine up to deliver more power.
So what’s it like to drive?
TBH, as I made my way back through the town (20-40mph), I couldn’t really notice much difference, although I did detect slightly more low-down torque and I do drive carefully most of the time, especially when in traffic.
I also noticed a very slight difference in the way the DSG ‘box was behaving. It holds on to gears very slightly longer (especially in Sport mode where red-lining is now systematic) and – more disappointingly – exhibits greater drivetrain shunt/hesitation when negotiating roundabouts, for example. It’s not bad, but you do need to be slightly more delicate with your right foot at lower speeds. I dare say that this is not an issue with the manual.
On the way back home, I had ample opportunity to let the car loose on the superb French motorways, although you have to be very careful now as the police come down hard on speeders. The bottom line is that there is considerably more grunt than the stock car. Having owned a number of powerful cars – and if I hadn’t known about the 275hp official figure – I would have guessed that the remapped engine was producing more in the region of 300hp.
The car is a lot more responsive and feels like (apologies for the subjectivity here) a ‘proper sports car’. Acceleration is very rapid, almost brutal, although for some strange reason I don’t fully understand, being pulled along by the front wheels – however briskly – never feels quite as satisfying as being pushed along by the rear ones.
I did not experience any loss of traction, though again, I would consider myself a careful driver and am certainly not looking to thrash the car to within an inch of its life at every opportunity. Perhaps the biggest usable difference was at higher speeds: putting my foot down at 70 now produces an instant surge and I was easily able to accelerate up to about 100 for a few seconds. The DSG also now drops down a gear – or two! – even at high speed. I can’t quite see the point, as the gain in terms of acceleration is minimal, but there’s not a lot I can do about it, other than being extra careful with the throttle to keep it in 6th.
I stopped on the way to see my 19-year-old son. He had driven my GTI before and was keen to try this new version (with me in the passenger seat, for obvious reasons!). He had put the car in sport mode – which is actually almost redundant now, IMHO – and accelerating fairly hard out of a roundabout onto a dual carriageway put a big grin on his face. He confirmed that there was a big difference.
Conclusion – is it worth it?
Apart from the slight reservations regarding the increase in drivetrain shunt and hesitation with the DSG ‘box (although I may get used to this), I would have to say yes. OK, so it’s expensive, but if VW offered a GTI Plus (Golf R?) with 275hp for just £500 + VAT more than the standard model, then I suspect most of us would take it, in much the same way we opt for the 18†wheels.
I have tried to be as factual and unemotional as possible in this review, in the hope that it will help others make up their minds. Please feel free to ask any questions.
