Just in case anybody is still tuning in after xx pages of this thread:
I did a back to back drive of the R and a GTD yesterday which was quite interesting. Well, to me at least.
James75 (who you'd know from golfmk7.com if you use that forum) lives in the next village to me; I'd obviously told him about the car change once I'd picked the R up, and knew he'd be wanting to see the R ASAP as he's a great guy and really loves his cars (and T5 vans), particularly the tech.
James' car is an interesting comparison as his GTD is specced with lots of techie extras and is also a white five door.
Obviously I'd driven my GTI and the R back to back so it was interesting to hand the keys of the R to James and see what he thought. I think James was pretty impressed with the R and pretty much for the same reasons as me - it's pretty docile and very tractable at low speeds and then changes into something else altogether as the revs get higher up in the band.
There's no getting away from the fact that the GTD has the same torque peak as the R and at roughly similar RPM's where the torque plateau starts in both cars, with the R torque holding out longer but the GTD having higher gearing makes it an interesting comparison. The GTD gives a lazy V8 style slug of acceleration that's satisfying in its own way where as the R feels a bit like a greyhound in the stalls waiting to blast after the rabbit. I'd spent a good bit of time in GTD's previously and know how quick they can be at road speeds but driving them back to back the two cars' characters were very obvious in their differences.
And we won't mention the MPG difference at this point will we? 
I think part of the attraction of the mk7 R is it was introduced a bit like the mk5 GTI which in itself became pretty iconic in that it was put on the market at xxxx price demonstrating the £££ per bhp value.
You buy the R for the performance for the price and keeping the spec sensible makes it pretty decent value for money. Start loading it with extras and you're looking at a £40k car. You can buy a lot better performance car than a Golf when you get to those sort of levels. But buy them people do.
James' car has lane assist and all the other assists and Pro Nav and it's list price was probably pretty similar to the vanilla R.
An interesting dilemma at that cost point: sensible GTD loaded with toys to assist the driver and useful things like the speed limit displayed in the MFD (along with lane warnings flashing up), plus the big 8" screen. Or a slightly raucous R and a road map?
In other news: I made a bit of a balls up yesterday.
On Thursday I fitted the spacers. The car looks lots better, it's surprising what a few mm can do and the Cadiz fill the arches well and the car now has some shoulders.
Yesterday I took the car for a gentle run out to settle the new bolts into the hubs then came home and re-torqued them. All good.
So I popped the wheel cap covers back on and went inside for a cuppa.
D'oh!
Just as I got to the front door the penny dropped.
The VW nuts have hollow ends so you can hook the covers off.
The aftermarket bolts don't have hollow ends.
I now have covers that won't come off the bolts as there's no room to hook them out and the nut covers fill the nut holes so well there's not room to lever them off either. 
Today's job is...
Yes it was me, I drove the R...
Of course I loved it, who wouldn't?
Just getting to the cost aspect. I managed to get a Lapiz Blue with a few options down to what I paid for my GTD via the ever interesting Drive the Deal.
With App Connect there's a valid argument that you can drop Sat Nav options and use an App although I have concerns that it isn't GPS and here in Devon, that could be a problem with signal strength. I would be less concerned about options in an R then I would in a GTD, the R is about the performance and if you can get a good price then i'd be happy with that.
Nonetheless I had some options on the R and I had it at around the 29k mark, that's tempting, 300bhp for that kind of money? You could argue that you should forget the options, it will be cheaper still. (
https://www.drivethedeal.com/buy-a-new-car/VOLKSWAGEN/GOLF_HATCHBACK/2.0_TSI_R_5dr_63193.html?Capid=63193&type=discounted)
Around 28k.... The R is often portrayed as being expensive but seeing it like this, it looks like a bit of a bargain. It would make me question the GTI although that's still a great car.
I didn't get the best deal on my GTD - that was my fault and partly down to complexities of trying to sell a VW California Beach, in reality I was probably about £1500 shy of a great deal but I am still completely bowled over by my GTD. I did go option crazy to an extent, I was trying to avoid 'retrofit disease', I'd experienced this costly condition with my California and wanted a vehicle that was right for me from the off. I also wanted to try and future proof it a bit in readiness for a facelift or spec changes. But options are personal and they don't make the car suddenly better, just different
Some of my options I do really like such as Dynamic Light Assist where you can leave high beams on and it blocks part of the beam pattern as to not dazzle oncoming drivers, that's clever, useful and works well. But options are options, I once had options described to me as taking a lot of money, going to the bottom of your garden and setting fire to it
So driving the R...
It's a short test drive, i can't give you a full review but there are some immediate differences between the R and GTD beyond the obvious power difference.
The R is far more tactile, the GTD is fast and it handles and steers fabulously but there is something about the R which feels less false or numb. I am not doing the GTD down but the R feels like a performance car, the steering is just more immediate. This probably won't come as a surprise but it is a much more involved experience. Being a petrol car it also drives differently, you're up to 6th quite quickly.
The most interesting about R is perhaps not how well it goes fast but how well it goes slow. It's completely calm driving round a town speeds, it almost unnerves, it's not shouty or angry, it's just a Golf. You kind of fear it's going to creep up on you and surprise and sure, it's there, the eagerness is never far away, but this is a completely normal Golf to drive at town speeds. Perhaps this is the genius of this gen of hyper Golf? It's what they term these days as an 'everything car'.
I did do a quick MPG test which is not particularly relevant but nonetheless on a stretch of road where from cold I can get the GTD up to around 45 - 50 mpg, it sat at around 32 - 35. Not actually that bad, my old T5 California would have done the same.
I prefer the seats Exonian's - the 'basic' seats to me in the R look the best, I like the styling details, they work far better in the metal. VW have cleverly not taken the Ciivic R approach of reversing into a branch of Halfords, see what bits attach themselves and driving off again. I like the over the top 4 exhaust outlets, it works because the rest of the car is so subtle.
I also like the darker LED rear lights and the double U front lights with LED indicator but I've remembered Retrofit Disease and I don't want to catch another dose of that
The question with the R as a daily driver for me, is how much do I want the additional expense of running compared to the times I would use the power and what it does, which is I guess why so many GTD's are sold. In reality there is no rational answer to this question because none of these cars are rational decisions, you buy them because they excite you, you want them and you want the experience. Why didn't a buy I Seat Leon with the same engine as my GTD, not because I think it is a poor car, but the GTD is a Golf and it has that heritage and that's an experience.
On a slightly different note we did discuss some VCDS mods. I've had a traffic sign recognition activated but it's not as exciting as it sounds and I do question how it is working but it is handy to have the speed limit sign displayed on the MFD.
Oh the spacers give the car a fantastic looks, a more squat hunkered down look, looks superb.
I do want to drive the R again, it feels amazing, hopefully once the 1000 mile mark has arrived we can go out again. There's no doubt with the Golf feel and refinement plus the amazing 300bhp performance VW have created a vehicle that is more than a match for more expensive German brethren.
James
