To an outsider landing in this thread they'd think that nearly all R owners have a superiority complex and GTI owners had an inferiority complex going by some of the posts.
Hence I've resisted posting in here up until now and very nearly didn't but I had either an angel or a devil sat on my shoulder prodding me (I'll reserve judgment as to which).
My own experience will be pretty useless to the OP anyway as I'm a dyed in the wool manual driver (purely for reasons of vehicle control and driving style), and I'm sure nobody will give a toss what I think anyway.
For those that have teleported here recently or haven't been paying attention, I had a long history of modified previous generation GTIs, a handful of quick TDIs and some other reasonably warm hatchback offerings over the last 30 years of driving.
I spent 19 months at the wheel of a GTI PP before buying an R and spent a further 18 months with that. Both were modified after a while of acclimatising to them, neither really needed it aside from a pedal box.
Just to add some further irrelevant experience to it I had a GTD for a month or two and have had an Edition 40 for about 8 months now.
All manuals.
I don't want a gearbox that decides when I lift off the throttle it's going to pre-engage a higher gear with clutch 2 when in fact I'm doing a cat like pause waiting for a gap I'm anticipating or a change of traffic light ahead so I can snick down two gears in a block change and smoothly hit warp drive. And at the other extreme if I get into a skid unexpectedly (ice on a blind bend or oil on the road or just a good ol' aquaplane) I like to be able to dip the clutch extremely quickly to assist regaining control. It's just a driving style thing.
I know most people these days think the world ends about two metres in front of their bonnet and their impatient driving styles reflect this in see a gap, fill it and worry about whether it was safe to do so afterwards, but I'm not most people.
So my opinion is pretty irrelevant to everyone really as I drive the worst of both worlds going by this thread. I have an under-tuned Golf R engine in an inferior GTI chassis which just means I sit there on the edge of my drive frantically spinning my front wheels and going nowhere...
That probably explains my very low mileage.
So, the GTI, great car. Much underrated since the introduction of the R and still the best middle of the road hot hatch blend like it always has been. I think VW engineers have always had a soft spot for the GTI, it's their little historic victory over the management from many generations ago. Maybe that's just my rose tinted specs though but from press releases and previous statements from VW engineers you do know they have a soft spot for the GTI model (or brand in modern terminology) and won't dilute it with estate cars or SUVs.
The GTI is the laid back hot hatch. I've always been a fan of the smaller quicker spinning turbo of the GTI which when treated to a stage 1 tune gives all the performance you could need on the road and the power just comes in effortlessly at very low revs.
The VAQ diff is an amazing bit of kit. It's incredibly subtle but I've driven stretches of road back to back with a mk7 GTI my friend had as a company car and my own PP GTI and although the MQB GTI corners with very little understeer the VAQ equipped car can actually be driven round the corner with power applied in a way that even an R doesn't like as it actually tightens the cornering line rather than understeering. That ladies and gentlemen is grip which is not to be confused with traction.
The brakes on a PP GTI are also very good so long as you don't expect trackway like performance from them. For British road speeds rather than sustained high speed use they're actually pretty effective and inspire more confidence than the smaller rotors on the standard GTI.
Jumping out of the GTI into the R the first thing I noticed was the engine's character was very different. The R engine was much more peppy. The old puppy on a leash analogy might be a bit overused and in fact I can think of more responsive cars I've driven but side by side that's the initial difference I found.
Show the R a stretch of open road and the engine just wants to go. Below 3000rpm the GTI was more responsive and if you don't get the revs right in an R there does feel like there's a hole in the torque curve at lowish RPM's which you might not get with a DSG(?) but as soon as the R's turbo comes on song (and it's not laggy like the old K04 turbo'd Rs) it just wants to zip round to the red line.
The engines are remarkably similar in some aspects but VW have given them different characters.
The smaller turbo'd GTI is in a much more relaxed state of tune, it happily runs on 95RON and is loads better on fuel. Irrelevant if your employer throws cash your way towards your fuel bill but definitely real world relevant for those of us who don't have silver spoons in our gobs. The mk7 GTI I had was the most fuel efficient version of any Golf GTI I've owned and I've owned at least one version of every single series of GTI from 1.6 MK1 GTI to 1.8 MK1 GTI right through to every version of mk7 Performance Golf (the only exception being the mk3 Golfs I owned were VR6s and the equivalent GTI's I had were the lighter and better handling Ibiza GTI's of that era).
The main reason it's so good on fuel is the state of tune and the very significant torque at low RPM's meaning gear changing is hardly ever necessary unless in heavy traffic. It has TDI torque coupled with petrol flexibility and good gearing.
The GTI is a very nice car to own and drive.
The only downside to me was the fairly flat power delivery and the suspension which jarred very badly on sudden ruts or surface changes. I'd occasionally get an almighty crash go through the car where there was a sudden change of tarmac grade on an open road at speed. The R had much better suspension settings to deal with that and rode really well on 19's without DCC.
Does the R have more grip? That depends on how you define grip but I'd say a resolute no. It has better traction and that instils over confidence in some drivers. I've been on track and had 4wd VW's and Audis spin in front of me. Tyres grip and all wheel drive aids traction. If you have decent tyres and 4wd then you're on a winner! But the VAQ does a really good job of torque distribution aiding grip and traction so long as there is steering angle applied.
The R is a much quicker point to point car on the right roads. The R will easily out drag a GTI from standstill if boy racing is your thing, especially if you have a PlayStation gearbox and have got the launch control settings down to a fine art. Hell, I used to find Audi Diesels would smoke me off the line in my manual R if I wasn't in the mood to use all the revs.
And there's the crux.
If you don't use high revs a lot then you'll never get the full performance benefit of the R.
It's still a very nice car to drive, still relatively quick and even relatively frugal if you never use more than 4000rpm. But that's not playing to the car's strengths.
I live in the West Country of England which is well known for people leaning on their pitchforks wearing smocks and chewing on a raw carrot whilst standing at a five bar gate watching the world crawl by.
I was having a random conversation with a chap moving down from Liverpool a few days ago. He was moving down to be near their daughter who lives down this way. The one thing he and his wife found a bit of a shock was the roads down this way which are, in his words "Your A roads are like the country lanes where we come from, they're very narrow and are all up and down with poor visibility, we'd class an A road as long and wide or more likely a dual carriageway." So you can imagine what our B roads are like...
An R on those roads is no quicker than a GTI PP in most conditions.
You just don't have time to wind the engine up to 7000rpm as you need to be setting yourself up for the next corner by then.
4WD won't give you any better grip than the VAQ would and in fact with its lack of understeer the VAQ diff, the better turning circle and a quicker spinning turbo could actually be a benefit. Certainly the 340mm brakes are called into good use!
The GTI chassis is a little more lively, the R more surefooted, neither will kill you unless you do something really stupid...
That's a reason I like tuned TDI engines, on the roads I drive it's better to have peak power at a useable 4000rpm than a lofty 7000rpm which you frequently don't have time to reach before you have to adjust speed.
Lets face it, the R is the range topper and therefore the best Golf, but some of its virtues you might never really experience if your driving style is very laid back or the roads you travel on wouldn't reflect the amazing cross country capabilities of the R.
The R is also a really good motorway car, the ride over expansion joints doesn't jar and the damping is spot on plus the engine is right in its sweet spot. Squeeze the accelerator at 80 and the thing just shoots off. Not that I'd recommend that unless you know 100% that your rear view doesn't contain an unmarked traffic car.
If you're the sort of person who has to go into the outside lane of every 'merge in turn' two lanes into one traffic lights whether you can see whether the road ahead is clear or not then a DSG R is essential. If a motorway on ramp is seen as a rocket ship launch pad then a DSG R is for you. If every straight stretch of road means you have to overtake someone then you're an R person.
A GTI is the perfect all rounder in its blend of abilities versus running costs and its respectable image.
The R just does the performance thing that much better. If you use it to its full advantage. Not everyone does, for some it's just the image of having the range topper or the smugness of Evo's road test reviews being on your side.
Those that are going to use the performance though, there is a significant difference at 8/10 and above driving.
