Advice please re driving modes and Keyless Entry

[Toeman]

I’m from norm iron as well and have 7.5 performance one. Don’t drive it in eco    Just have fun in it. What colour  is yours   Might see you cruising the roads gettin used to it lol

[Ceefeesh]

'...bout ye!
Re: we are up-sizing tomorrow. Welcome.  Have things gone to plan? Any pics? Spec?

[Vwjap]

The keyless doors you can disable via vcds or obdeleven but it doesn’t do the boot

[Norn Iron]

I’m from norm iron as well and have 7.5 performance one. Don’t drive it in eco    Just have fun in it. What colour  is yours   Might see you cruising the roads gettin used to it lol

Thanks Toeman for advice. I drove the Polo GTI until recently in Eco but would shift into Sport when overtaking. This was a better option than being permanently in Eco and then wanting to overtake as there was too much lag.
Just come back from our first drive along the coast. 55 mile round trip. 36 MPG. Considering all the braking and occasional stopping  I would say that was ok. Hopefully, a decent run would see it add a few more miles per gallon?
I will do a proper comparison with the Polo GTI in a few days but our initial thoughts are Wow! My wife is currently very unwell but the leather bucket seat and extra leg room in the front well, meant she had a great, comfortable ride unlike the previous car.
As you said  just have fun with it. Towards the end, I felt confident to try out the split diffs a try on a bend I know really well. Incredible! The Polo gti would not have given me the wow factor and wouldn't have gone round that sharp bend stuck to the road like a limpet.
The big question though is the Golf GTI worth another £10k on top of the Polo version bearing in mind the size isn't that much bigger? As we got an ex-demo with only 1600 miles on the clock and £10,000 knocked off (a year old but hasn't been driven for yonks) it is a no brainer! Our trade in value was also on our side.
Had there not been 10k reduction would I have bought it? No, because I couldn't have justified spending well over £30k for a car even if it was a Golf GTI. However, and this is a massive however, it's the law of diminished returns. Nigel Tufnel, the 'legendary' guitarist described his amp as "One louder" than all the others. That's it. Our Nigel would understand! Everything about the Golf GTI is just one louder in every department compared to the Olop. The Polo was great to drive, don't get me wrong. It performed brilliantly on long journeys. But to receive one more mark in every department, individually and collectively over the Polo, the price will inevitably add up.
When you put it like that, had VW made the Mk7.5 like the Polo GTI but just on a slightly bigger chassis, there's no way it would be worth an extra £10k. But VW haven't. I'm beginning to appreciate this now after just a few hours. Everything, and I mean everything, is just one better. With everything representing so many different parts, accessories, interior and exterior functions, the law of diminished returns demands an extra £10,000.
Blimey, the above was almost a full review!
Thanks to all those who explained how to switch off the Keyless Entry. The method works very well.
If anyone could tell me what I'm likely to achieve fuel consumption wise, that would be great. To summarise: the Polo GTI MPG, on a decent motorway/dual carriageway journey of 40 miles, would return around 45mpg with the occasional 50mpg. A typical B road journey with a few junction stops would achieve around 40mpg.
I'll do a full review comparison in a few days time.

[Adam T7]

I’d be getting about 42 - 43 mpg on run like that at legal speeds.

[Ceefeesh]

Hi Norn Iron
Apologies for the vernacular greeting earlier, thought it might be a clue of my locale. My average over the circa 4K miles I have done in my car over the last 18 months is 28.1! I have not been ‘flying low’ nor ignoring speed limits but have indulged in some spirited acceleration, - part of the raison d’etre  for GTI ownership. I took my car out tonight on a drive around mostly ‘A’ and a couple of ‘B’ roads in Co Down, which were pretty deserted. To try it I drove in eco and sedately, to see what I might get. I covered 33miles and averaged 32. This is the best I have achieved and it’s still not great. My car is one of the last GTIs 230bhp and six speed DSG. I too wonder if mileage will improve. My car has about 6.5k on the clock. I accept GTIs are not about economy and hope things might still improve as the car accrues some miles.

[monkeyhanger]

MPG is dependent on 4 main factors, with respect to a particular car:-

1. Driving style. You can have a heavy right foot and still drive economically if you read the road ahead well to preserve momentum and come off the throttle early rather than accelerating towards a situation that'll require you to brake.

2. Congestion. If you are in stop-start situations with a low average speed, your mpg will suffer. You'll see the difference between a normal working week and a week with the school holidays and lots of parents off work. Right now, with loads of people working from home or furloughed, the roads are much quieter and most still driving will have seen a mpg increase as a result.

3. Length of journey. A longer journey will give you better mpg. The car's economy is poor when cold and much better when hot. The longer the journey, the less that cold part of the journey has an influence on the overall trip. If you're doing a longer journey, it's more likely to be predominantly at a decent cruising speed with less gear changes.

4. Average speed for trip. Linked to congestion, if you are on mainly 50/60mph roads, you're going to be in the sweet spot for fuel economy. If you're crawling through 20mph roads littered with speed bumps, not so much.

When I had my 2013 GTD, I had an 8 mile commute through a split of urban crawl and dual carriageway 70mph roads. I did about 42mpg average on that commute.

In my Golf R on the same commute, it was about 32mpg.

Changing jobs, I had a 20 mile commute. I got 36mpg in the Golf R, but on occasion I took the wife's A1 1.6TDI and hammered it, getting 65mpg for the journey (the wife was lucky to see 40mpg on her 8 mile commute).

Fast forward to my Polo GTI+. A 13 mile commute with 3 miles of it within congestion prone areas. On a good day it was 37mpg, on a bad day it was 28mpg.

Still in the GTI+, but with a 32 mile drive at 70mph down the A19 on my current commute, I get about 44mpg.

In summary:

Unless you drive like a nun, you're unlikely to see 40mpg in a Golf GTI unless your journey length exceeds 25 miles on relatively uncongested roads.

Unless you drive like a nutter, you are unlikely to see less than 25mpg unless your journey length is under 5 miles or your journey is incredibly congested.

Buying a hot hatch and driving it in Eco all the time makes no sense to me. Relative to the journey you're doing, your mpg is unlikely to change appreciably between Eco and Sport - the free wheeling gains in Eco are very small, the other energy saving things like turning off cornering lights etc save very little, but you'll have a very much dulled throttle. Your car will lose thousands in depreciation every year. Driving like a nun to positive effect your fuel bill by maybe £150 a year is crazy. If you're looking to do that, you might as well've bought a well specced 1.0TSI variant.

[ar899]

Another way to look at it is that if you want a hot hatch, then the GTI will be probably be the most economical option whichever way you drive and whatever type of roads you drive on. There doesn't appear to be any other hatches on the market with similar performance with better economy and most would be quite a bit poorer.

There are diesel (warm hatch?) options of course but would you buy one of those with your own money at the mo? Maybe only if you do 20k/year and mostly on motorways.

[Exonian]

Blimey, the above was almost a full review!

That was a very good off the cuff summary there!

Pretty much spot on with the likening of the Golf feeling ‘up one notch’ in nearly all areas.
My son has a current generation Ibiza which feels very similar in quality and build to the latest Polos, and I find it a really nice car both inside and out but there’s no denying the feel of the Golf has a certain something in almost every department that the (ever so slightly) smaller car lacks.
In isolation the Ibiza feels really good but when climbing into the Golf straight afterwards it’s clear where the extra money has been spent.

The GTI has a smallish turbo that spins up really quickly producing a very good torque spread in both Polo and Golf versions. It’s quite an efficient set up and is the reason both cars get such good economy. The R turbo and engine set up is slightly less fuel efficient but still not bad considering the power output.
I’d expect the Polo, being in a slightly ‘turned down a notch’ state of tune, would be 5% plus better on fuel in general use but the Golf doesn’t fare too badly in comparison. The Golf GTI is the perfect middle ground car in the performance range. 

[Norn Iron]

Ceefeesh, your greeting was spot on. No need to apologise at all!
Thanks to all who have given replies. Excellent information all round.
I will post more laters!