Having said that, I didn't think VW could make the R look any more dull & bland than they did with the 7/7.5, but they appear to have succeeded...
Its a design goal. R's have never looked like a "type R". Its always lower key than a GTI.
Nobody says it (or any Golf) should look like a Type R, but there is a middle ground, a look of subtle aggression which has been synonymous with R's. The R32 (MK4 and Mk5), R (MK6 and Mk7/7.5) were not "lower key" than their GTI counterparts. Take the GTI red stripe off the 7/7.5 and, as the GTD, shows, and the GTI is just as low key as the R. So what's changed? Well, quite simply put, the R-Line models. The GTi looks different to the R-Line model due to the red accents, but bar the 4 exhausts on the R, the styling is no longer 'different' enough, IMO, to be seen as aggressive and/or Halo. Look at the new Arteon R, it's vastly different to the R-Line version, but I'm struggling here to see much difference here, albeit as I mentioned there's still lots of blue tape covering up accent lines so we may see something different in the final production model.