Is this the perfect sports car? // Updated 2025 VW Golf R review

This is a Motormouth couple car review of the updated 2025 Volkswagen Golf R.
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What’s New? New front headlamps and bumper, an illuminated front logo, standard 19” wheels which are 20% lighter than the previous Golf R wheels improving on performance and handling. The interior sees updates with a new décor and a larger screen and infotainment system with faster processing times. Volkswagen has added real buttons on the steering wheel, something many consumers wanted.
The 2025 Volkswagen Golf R gets a power boost, an extra 13 horsepower. It’s powered by a 2L turbocharged 4 cylinder with a 7-speed dual clutch transmission, 328 horsepower and 295 lb-ft of torque, standard AWD. A manual transmission offering is no longer available.
This 2025 Volkswagen Golf R comes standard with dynamic chassis control with driving profiles, 4-motion AWD with a rear axle torque vectoring differential, electronic differential lock and the R Performance package with drift and special driving modes. The torque vectoring rear differential gives you good grip and control with a more agile handling response. The Golf R also comes with park assist plus.
Other standard features include, a 12.9” touchscreen with navigation, wireless Apple Carplay and Android Auto, 10.25” digital driver display, wireless charger, 8-speaker Harman Kardon audio system, head-up display, Nappa leather seating surfaces, heated and ventilated power front seats, driver seat memory, heated sport steering wheel with R button and IQ.Drive driver assist technology. In the US, a panoramic sunroof is also standard.
VW has added the 2025 Volkswagen Golf R Black Edition trim with black exterior accents including black badging, a black painted front grille, black quad exhaust tips, darkened headlamp elements and black wheels.
Here’s the 2025 Volkswagen Golf R pricing for Canada which includes, freight, PDI and fees. Golf R $53,672 CAD and Black Edition $56,272 CAD.
In the US Golf R $47,100 USD and Black Edition $48,415 USD.
2025 Volkswagen Golf R fuel economy, it gets 10.5L/100 km, 22 MPG city and 7.7L/100 km, 31 MPG highway.

Andrea Instagram https://www.instagram.com/motormouth_andrea/
Zack Instagram https://www.instagram.com/motormouth_auto/

We’re at the Volkswagen drive event for the Golf R. And it gets a refresh. Put it in R for subscribe. Is that right? No, it’s not right. No, it’s not. It’s ask for subscribe. Oh, yeah. Wow. Okay, so these videos came out a few days apart, but we just went from GTI moments ago and got into the Golf R. Oh, you can notice a difference. Oh, there’s a difference. All right. So, what’s under the hood of the Golf R? So, gone is the manual transmission for 2025, but it does get a power boost, an extra 13 horsepower. The Golf R is powered by a 2 L turbocharged 4 cylinder with a 7speed automatic DSG, 328 horsepower and 295 pound- feet of torque, standard all-wheel drive, and you’ve got to put premium fuel in the R. All right. So, the big difference between a GTI and a Golf R is you get more power as Andrea mentioned. You also get all-wheel drive and you get that torque vectoring differential in the back that has drift mode, has the autobond mode. It allows you to rotate the car with the rear wheels. You can’t do that on a GTI cuz it’s a front driver only. This is like the allround sports car. Yeah, it’s like the perfect Canadian sports car. We’ll get into that in a moment. Right now, we’ll get into what are the key standard features of the Golf R. The base trim comes with a 12.9 in touchscreen with navigation, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a 10 and a quarter inch digital driver display, a wireless charger, the eight speakeraker Harmon Cardon audio system, a head-up display, Napa leather seating surfaces, heated and ventilated power front seats, driver seat memory, heated sport steering wheel with the R button, and IQ drive driver assist technology. ology. In the US, the sunroof is also standard. So, they did a little presentation for us last night, getting us warmed up for this Golf R. Uh, the Golf R out sells the GTI. I didn’t know that. No, me either. And they kind of summarized it this way, especially for the Canadian market. This is like the perfect sports car for Canada because it’s small, it’s fun, it’s powerful, and it’s all-wheel drive. And people like that stuff. They do. It checks a lot of the right boxes. It’s fun. It’s sporty. It’s versatile because it truly is that hot hatch. I mean, I get why people love it. I just find that it gets really up in price compared to the GTI. And I brought that up to the head of product planning. I said, you know, it’s a spendy unit. And he says the the contenders, people who are buying this are looking at premium cars, say like a a 2 series BMW, and then they land on this and they’re like, I can have everything I want, including a manual. Oh, wait a second. You can’t have that anymore. No manual for you. No. So, what’s new for 2025? The Golf R gets a new bumper, new headlights, and it also comes standard with 19in wheels, which are 20% lighter than the previous wheels that they used on the outgoing model just to improve on performance and handling. Yeah, the unsprung weight. That’s a big deal. Uh the front of the vehicle, by the way, Andrea, we’re in the black edition. We are, which is new. I I give you one guess as to why they call it the black edition. Have you got it? Okay. Yeah. It wouldn’t be my choice because you know, Mandre, I loathe uh black cars because they’re just so much work to keep clean. But hey, that’s your choice. If you love a black car, go for it. Uh what I find interesting though on the outside is the front valance used to be colorcoded to the car, the bumper and the air foil and everything. Now it’s all black. You don’t notice it obviously on this car, but I took a quick shot of the blue one and you can see that it’s more black at the front. Makes it look a little bit heavier. They also put air foils on the edges of the bumper as well. So, you decide whether you like that or not. I actually like the blue in the black edition. I think it looks pretty cool with all of the black accents and the darker wheels. It gives it, you know, kind of a mysterious vibe. Kind of like me. kind of like you, Zach. So, one of the other things they did is they they slimmed out the headlamps. They added for the high beams, three projectors. Small changes. Volkswagen doesn’t throw out the baby with the bathro. They go, “This thing works. This thing sells. Let’s just tweak it and make it a little bit better.” The 13 more horsepower is definitely an improvement. That’s all just through programming and tuning. There’s no change to the engine. It’s just a programming function. And if you want, you can also add the titanium exhaust system, which is 7 kilos lighter. Acropovich. Acropovich is the name of the company. And they make high-end exhaust for high-end cars like Lamborghini. And this is the lowest end car they make an exhaust for. And it’s catback. It’s not from the headers all the way back. It’s from the cat back. So, it’s not like a straight pipe. Did I just said straight pipe? Hi. Hi, guys. Nice to see you. But, uh, there you go. Uh, it’s something that you might want to do and it’s only available on the black edition. That’s right. And this comes standard with the R performance package which gives you the drift mode and the extra driving modes. The Golf R also comes with park assist plus. It gets 4.4 4 in of ground clearance and comes standard with LED headlamps, LED tail lamps, poor weather lights with corner lights, surround lighting with welcome light projected on the ground, powerfolding exterior mirrors, 19-in wheels with summer performance tires, and a tire repair kit. Yes. And unlike the GTI where it’s only the top trim has the dynamic chassis control, you get that baked in with the Golf R, and you get that baked in with the big check. You got a carve. Yep. If you do want to put a spare tire back there, you can. You can order one. There’s room for it, but Volkswagen was just trying to keep the weight down. This is their performance model. This video is brought video, I’ll put the link here. It’s not exactly copy and paste from the GTI to the Golf R and the interior. There are some differences. Uh, one big one is the circle in front of me, the steering wheel. But we’ll start with the biggest change first, and that’s the biggest feature on the dash. As I asked last time, Andrea, how big is the screen? 12.9 in touchscreen with wireless, Apple CarPlay, and Android Auto standard equipment. I do like how it’s tilted towards the driver. Some are saying, “I find this screen so big.” The previous model, the screen was more integrated, but it has faster processing times. It is just a better system than the outgoing model. And because it’s bigger, they have hard keys at the bottom that stay on all the time. If you know the previous model, you had to hit the seat warmers to get into the climate menu or hit the climate menu below. Those seat warmer keys are on the screen at the bottom at all times. Plus the swipy haptic feedback for the volume control and for the heat are back lit now. That was a major complaint. People couldn’t use it at night. I don’t know why it’s right there, but anyway, it’s now back lit. And this is used in other Volkswagen products. So Volkswagen did listen. They’ve made tweaks. They are listening to their customers, which is always a good thing. Of course, the steering wheel, there were complaints about that. it is not going to get the new GTI steering wheel with proper buttons because it has the R button. And I said, “Well, can you change that one day?” They said, “No.” Yeah. So, the way they explained it is because this is a steering wheel just for the Golf R with a button on it. Um, they said they can’t re-engineer that other steering. This is a big company with a lot of engineering power. I just want to say they have a lot of engineers in Germany. Uh, you kind of think they could do that, but they’re sticking with this. We have a GTI 2024 model with this steering wheel. I’m here to tell you, you do get used to it, but I do prefer the new one. I’m not going to lie. I prefer the new one. It looks good. Is that a deal breaker, Andrea? No. Okay. Obviously not, cuz we bought one with it. Now, the other thing they did is on the dash pad here, um, they’ve gone with a real carbon fiber weave on the dash and they kind of hide some of the piano black because of the bigger screen. Yeah, it looks better in here. It’s a simple and modern interior, which I really like. There’s still quite a bit of the shiny hard plastic at the center console. Um, maybe one day they’ll look into changing that. I think it would have looked fabulous with the carbon fiber. Uh but it would cost more money. Although we have spoken to another manufacturer about piano black and is it less money and they actually said no that they just used piano black because it was kind of a a forward way of thinking futuristic and they thought it looked cool at the time. This is not what Volkswagen said. Okay. The one thing I will say though is the materials on the inside of this car, same as our car on the last year. Um, it’s all really good quality stuff. Even the door cards inside the the door cards there, it’s actually felt lined. These are small little details you typically don’t get in mainline cars. And also, look at this. The Alcantara. Uh, all of it is really well done. And I do like the carbon fiber. Real carbon fiber addition. Now, on this model, storage at the center console isn’t huge, but you have to remember, of course, what you’re driving. Door pockets though are quite wide. All right, let’s get into what we’re sitting on here, Andrea. These are the new seats for the uh Golf R. A lot of people really wanted these seats available in the European market. They finally make them a available. And there are some differences between Canada and the US, especially around the seats, the exhaust, and the sunroof, which we don’t have in this model. Okay, so here is how it works with the sunroof. You can add it to the base model Golf R for 1,250 Canadian, but the black edition does not get it at all in Canada. Now, you can add the Euro style package in the US for almost $3,800 to any Golf R trim, and that will get you the fabric seats, a sunroof delete, and the titanium exhaust system that we mentioned earlier in Canada. That exhaust system is going to cost you $3,000. See, to muddy things even more, sunroof, no sunroof, exhaust, Euro package. Uh the standard seat is the leather seat. Okay, we had that from before. These are the upgraded seat that come in that package. But in Canada, if you get the black edition, you can delete the leather and go for these seats as a nocost option. Yeah. Now, the only thing that you’re missing is you’re going to give up the power driver seat. Yeah. So, you give up the power function. It’s the same with the GTI. If you got the plaid seats, you gave up the power function. Uh, but this has heated seats in the rear. You still get those. You still get those. Oh, man. There’s so much to unbox. There is a lot to unbox, but I really like these seats. However, I do miss a power driver seat, especially if you’re sharing the vehicle with somebody. All right. So, if you do a lot of sort of aggressive driving, you’re going to want the cloth. You don’t slide around. Cloth is better. It’s grippy on your butt. Yeah. It grabs your butt when you’re sliding around those corners. It’s warmer in the winter. It’s cooler in the summer. Get these seats. Mhm. There you go. Speaking of seats, I’m getting in the back seat of the GTI. I If you’re really paying attention, I am not in a golf car, but it’s exactly the same. So, you can see the leg room is good, the headroom is good. How does this stack up? The Golf R is 168.9 in in length and has 41.2 in of front row legroom and 35 in of second row leg room. All right, here’s me lifting up the manual lift gate at the back with a hit of the crest there. We talked about it already. Under the floor, you can see the subwoofer and there is no temporary spare tire, but you can order it if you want from the dealer. Cargo space behind the second row is 19.9 cubic feet and overall cargo space is 34.5 cubic feet. Okay, so let’s get into all of the vital stats of the latest Golf R. Let’s start with pricing. We’ll do Canada first and then move on to the US. The Canadian pricing includes freight, PDI, and fees. The Golf R starts at just over 535,000 and the black edition is just over 56,000. In the US, the base model is just over $47,000 and the black edition is just under 48 and a half thousand. Here’s the fuel economy. 10.5 L per 100 kilome city, 7.7 on the highway. Has 22 mp gallon city, 31 on the highway. The warranty is good. It’s 4 years, 80,000 kilometers or 50,000 m. Lightning round. Two things we like, two things we like to see improved. The performance on this model truly is exceptional. It really is a blast to drive and a great allrounder. What I’d love to see Volkswagen do is give us the GTI steering wheel and also Okay, you can get white, you can get blue, and you can get black. That’s it. Three colors. Sorry, three colors. And I asked them last night, I said, “Why do you do more than three colors?” Oh, it cost a lot of money, Andrea. Oh, it cost a lot of money to do the get the other wheel. These are things I think they could work on in Wolsburg. Work on that, would you? So, there it is. It’s the latest Golf R. What do you guys think of that? 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