This is a great thread Mr Ex!
It was always going to be a Mk7 R. I bought the Mk6 GTI right at the end of their production run, having decided to not wait for the Mk7 GTI, but to use the Mk6 as a 'stop gap' car until the 7R came out (and, what a fantastic stop-gap it has been!). I rarely buy the first off the line of a new mark, preferring any teething problems to have been ironed out first. I might have ordered the R sooner but for the fact I wanted Dynaudio and that took a while to make an appearance.
To the point of the thread - during the wait for Dynaudio, I toyed with the idea of a A45 AMG, but at £42k for my chosen spec, well, no thanks, not for a humble hatchback. I have a soft spot for Focus ST's but I'm of an age where it would just look sad, so never a serious contender. As for the other comparable hot hatches, many (the Meganes, Civics and Vauxhalls) do not share the evolutionary design of the Golf (one of it's very finest points IMO), and as someone who keeps cars 3 or 4 years, I would tire very, very quickly of their mish-mash styling (if you can call it styling!)
And, after ordering the R during that long wait (of which you are all too well aware), in moments of frustration I cast my eye over other cars, including the S3 and RS3, but neither really set my heart or head alight.
I came to cars relatively late in my life, I was 30 before I learned to drive. Simply because, (having been brought up in and around cycling fraternity), bikes (and trains) were perfectly good for my needs up to that point.
So my list of pre-Golf GTI cars is very short one, but my foray into GTI's began with my third ever car, but first new car - a Peugeot 206 GTI. It wasn't a bad car, highly chuckable, but it definitely wasn't a good car!
And then one day I walked into a VW dealership (credit must go to my other half who suggested it). I was very reluctant at first, thinking only of the Mk4's which I didn't like (but now do), and so a little persuasion was required to get me through the door. There in the middle of the showroom was a Mk5 GTI. If you can have a car soulmate, that was the moment I found mine!
So, two Mk5's and a Mk6 later, here I am about to get Golf number 4. Why VW Golf? Because performance Golf's offer the right balance of everything I need and want in a car, most of which has been mentioned by others here. And, thus far, I can, hand on heart, say these cars have never failed to put a smile on my face, every day I have driven them. I love the heritage of Golf GTI's, (regretted not getting an R32 a few years back), and though the R needs to cut it's heritage teeth still, I'm pretty sure the 7R will go a long way to helping build that kudos.
And I will do my bit for that cause.