MK8 Golf R | The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

The VW MK8 Golf R has finally launched, but what’s the real truth about this car? Today, we find out…

The mark 8 volkswagen golf r has finally landed in australia what’s good what’s bad what’s awesome what’s annoying today we’re going to find out in this special episode of mighty car mods welcome to another episode of mighty car mods now the mark 8 volkswagen golf r has already been out for some time overseas but for australia it is brand new now you may have

Already seen some reviews for the market golf r like this g’day guys marty from car power here the all-new mark 8 golf r redefines day-to-day comfort with luxurious nappa leather as standard with heated and cooled seats wireless apple carplay and more than enough room in the boot for all your weekend duties spoiler alert the boot size is the same as the mark

7. the exclusive first drive of this car in australia actually went out on our second channel mcm tv 2 which you can check out here but as a previous owner of the mark 7 golf r i thought i’d point out some of the differences specifically between the previous model and this one before we go any further there’s a couple of things that you need to know i have owned

A lot of volkswagens over the years from the mark iii golf that we painted with beer salt and urine and then took to a honda meet through to a couple of mark iv gtis including the cheapest one that we could find in germany which we modified in 24 hours and then took to austria as part of the volkswagen worthy festival i’ve had a mark v gti a mark vi golf r and of

Course my modified mark 7 golf r which for me was a game changer it redefined the idea of having sheer supercar performance wrapped up in a package that you could use as a daily driver so yes there have been a lot of golfs on the show over the years at this point i should point out that we’ve had way more cars on the show than just volkswagens in fact there’s a

Whole book full of all the cards we’ve done over the last 14 years and we will sign a copy and send it to you anywhere in the world i’ve owned lots of subarus lots of nissans even a lotus and lots of normal cars as well oh and did i mention my suzuki chimney because right now of course you are watching the world’s number one four-wheel driving channel now i’ve

Heard from a lot of people who got into the mark 7 golf r because they saw the video of my mark 7 golfer and so i decided i had a responsibility to give you my real impressions on the mark 8 golf r three important notes number one this one at esx is gonna be freaking awesome number two i’m probably going to like this car confirmation bias is where your mind has

A preconceived idea about an idea that you believe in because you already hold a belief that holds that belief to be the true belief about the thing that you’re believing in golfs are not the best car in the world and they’re not the fastest car in the world but psychologically i’m going to be primed to try and find aspects of this car that fit my view which is

I like them there are some things i don’t like and i’ll tell you about them soon number three as a composer i’ve been paid to write music for volkswagen tv commercials i’ve also done music for ford volvo ram mazda and toyota but we’re not here to talk about gr corollas today it’s all about the golf volkswagen sponsored a video on the market golf r on our second

Channel they also helped us fund a trip to werthesea in austria and drive the tcr in slovenia and this is a press car they gave it to me for free i have to give it back with all of that said this video is not sponsored no one asked us to make it no one’s paying us to make it it’s nothing more than my opinion keep in mind in my opinion a diatomira is the best car

In the world and when it comes to two wheels it’s the 110cc honda ct110 which is why we painted our walls honda red compared to the mark 7 golf r the mark 8 is pretty much the same dimensions but it is a little bit heavier the car is built on the same mqb platform as the mark 7 and features the same ea 888 engine volkswagen where are the gas struts for this okay

The engine’s not exactly the same but there’ll be more on that soon the mark 8 has a 2-liter 4-cylinder engine with a 7-speed dsg and launch control australia only gets the dsg automatic whereas us and canada actually get manual as an option because over there they love driving stick and a huge number of golf sold over there are sold as manual the mark 8 also makes

More power than the mark 7 320 horsepower which is 235 kilowatts it basically up 22 kilowatts and up 20 newton meters of torque volkswagen claim the zero to 100 time in this car is 4.8 seconds but i can tell you now that is absolute there are videos on youtube of people going way faster than that and car and driver recorded a time of 3.9 seconds why why would

You say it’s slower than it really is that makes no sense at all now when it comes to all-wheel drive cars what people really like doing is launching them and taking them down the quarter mile this one here will do the quarter mile in around 12 point something seconds the mark 7 did it in 13 point something seconds with modifications my mark 7 did 11.2 in australia

We get 19 by 8 diamond cut wheels with two three five 35 19 inch tires on them this design i don’t love it this car has fully adaptive suspension which you can adjust based on the drive mode you’re on and there’s also individual settings now what i do know is these springs and suspension setup is different to what’s on the mark 7. how do i know because when you

Go to buy aftermarket springs all the people that were making mark 7 stuff are selling different stuff for the mark 8. the front subframe is now made of aluminium so it’s lighter and volkswagens say that this here not only reduces weight but also optimized to provide maximum rigidity the car is already lowered from the factory by 20 mil and i actually think the

Height looks pretty good the brakes are absolutely huge ventilated and cross-drilled 357 millimeter discs with dual piston calipers let’s have a look in the engine bay can you imagine can you imagine for starters what seems to be getting the most attention under the bonnet of this car is this weird floppy engine cover why is it floppy nobody seems to know i

Read one post online of a guy saying that when he has no cover i’m not even joking he’s worried about chipmunks going and having sex with all of his wiring i don’t even know what a chipmunk is i’ve only ever heard of them on tv when they sing that i’ve never seen a chipmunk i don’t know what it is i think it’s a rabbit like on speed anyway turns out chipmunks

Market golf r no engine cover recipe for disaster a significant and exciting upgrade over the mark 7 is the mark 8 comes with a bigger turbo charger this is a continental unit which is instead of the is-38 unit that is on the mark 7. considering it’s already there and it’s already attached i can tell you from experience it’s way easier than trying to install a

Big turbo on your mark 7 because it is a big job that needs a lot of different components fuel is delivered by direct injection at 350 baht compared to the previous models 200 bar and what’s amazing about this engine is the peak 400 newton meters of torque comes in at just 2000 rpm the exhaust manifold on this ea triple eight engine is actually incorporated into

The cylinder head this means you’ve got less turbo lag quickest pull up times and better thermal efficiency when it comes to cooling i had a big revo front mount intercollar on my mark 7 golf r it looks like that same core is going to fit on here but with some different piping to make it all work these cars become very popular because lots of people like tuning

Them during their stage 1 to nine no one has managed to crack this yet but no doubt there are companies around the world trying to do so as such all of the mods that we are seeing around different places in the globe are focused on wheels tires brakes and suspension now my friends let’s talk about skids whenever i get a press car i make sure i only drive it on

The road the mark 8 golf r comes with an all new torque vectoring system that allows up to 50 of the power to go to the rear wheels and then up to 100 of that available power to either wheel let me demonstrate to you what that looks like the all-wheel drive four motion system can have a tendency to understeer when you’re driving at the limit on corners what this

Does is if you turn into the left it’ll send more power to the right wheel if you’re turning to the right you guessed it it’s going to send more power to the rear left wheel and then when you’re on a straight power to both wheels so the mark 8 golf r has a really fat exhaust that runs all the way through down to valved little exhaust flaps in the back there now

Traditionally when people change the cars to an aftermarket exhaust they’ve got two options either resonated or non-resonated this one from the factory is unresonated so if you did install an aftermarket gpf cat-back exhaust on here with a resonator in it it’s probably going to be softer than this now the car does pump some fake exhaust sound into the car and it

Is one of my criticisms that even with an exhaust this big no matter what mode you’re in it is still really quiet but we’ll talk more about that later with all of the media that’s come out about this car already overseas there is one thing that’s lighting up the comments like crazy one thing that is a massive controversy and it’s time to talk about it so we need

To take a walk so i can show you my big knob welcome to my recording studio my real job now so much technology has changed in the way that music is made and the way that video is made but one company realized that people did really still just want one thing and that is mackie with their very famous big knob there’s a whole lot of different buttons on there but

The most important one was the volume knob now i have the modern interpretation of that which is called a quartet by apogee now this here is just all little touch buttons but there is one thing that has stayed and that is the volume knob one of the things that i love more than anything else in the world is vintage synthesizers and what is the most common trait

Of a vintage synthesizer they are absolutely covered in knobs you can grab anything you can hit switches you can instantly make whatever sounds you needed to make now while this one here came out in the 1970s things looked very different today due to a range of different cost cutting marketing and accessibility issues a lot of synthesizers have now been recreated

As digital plugins so the equivalent of these old vintage synthesizers is now on a screen like this and if this was a touch screen i would hold a note and i would touch it my screen is not a touch screen so i’ve got to get a mouse and i’ve got to do all of my settings like this times have certainly changed and even modern synthesizers like this that used to be

Covered in knobs this is a controller keyboard now has a touchy bar on it so other than the buttons to put the windows up and down volkswagen have removed all of the buttons inside the car and now it’s all behind a touch screen and some people are not happy with the new system if you want to make any changes to the climate you can do that with voice command or you

Can do this kind of swipey hand thing to go through the menu or press this climate button which will give you all your settings now i get that some people like the olden days where there were buttons on everything and me myself i’ve got a studio full of analog synthesizers i love the knob but there are reviewers out there and journalists pretending that this is

Way harder to use than it actually is and that is just really annoying rather than a dial volume is now controlled with this swipey thing and if you want to mute you swipe all the way down or you can use volume on the steering wheel either side of the volume slider you’ve got your temperature control for your passenger and the driver and you’ve also got heated

Seats which in australia is probably not something you would need a lot but you’ve also got cooled seats and i can tell you that is an absolute game changer now one criticism that i think you know may be fair is that none of this is backlit so people are saying it’s hard to find the volume control in the dark that said i would always use the volume control on the

Steering wheel anyway the all-new steering wheel on the mark 8 incorporates this kind of haptic feedback buttons where you can kind of rub your finger over and press a button and you get this little vibration feedback now some of the criticism that has come from different journalists and people reviewing the car have said that this here is the heated steering wheel

Button and when they drive they’re accidentally turning it on i don’t know how they’re doing it i’ve got to be really honest if i’m sitting like this i don’t know in what format my arm needs to be like this even then i can’t turn it on i would have to i would have to put my arm over and now press now it’s on if you’re driving like that you probably shouldn’t

Have a driver’s license that part i don’t get it all and i feel like that’s just a bunch of internet people going i don’t like it even though in the real world that is not a problem one of the other criticisms that i saw on a show that i won’t name but used to be hosted by jeremy clarkson is how long it takes to actually activate the launch control now i don’t

Know why but in their video it took almost a minute of talking and fapping around to try and make it work so i want to show you how to actually do it in real time i’m going to start the car and see how long it actually takes to get into launch mode so the car is on i’m going to hold the r button down which puts me into race mode that’s into sport now i’m going to

Put that down esc into sport launch control active now i’m not going to release the brake because in the next um five or so meters it would be great until we hit the wall but that’s how easy it is now i don’t know why but there does seem to be a bit of a campaign around journalists to make sure it seems as hard as possible to do that this is done via shortcuts

Menu that you can set up with all sorts of different things you put your esc in the shortcut drop down choose what you want off you go you’re smoking falls at the lights at the track off the on your private road this wouldn’t be a real car review if i didn’t show you what it looked like when someone who’s 184 centimeters is sitting in the back there’s okay headroom

The leg room is reasonable but this car actually has an amputation mode which you can’t turn off i’ve got a friend sitting in the driver’s seat and if he gets out of the car now yep the seat i’m now completely crushed that is apparently called a convenient entry and exit function you cannot turn it off you can’t turn it off it means that now if i try and get out

Like this next time i try and get in the car i can’t get in before the driver because i can’t fit so the only way i can get in if you get in again and start the car now it’ll move forward enough for me to fit in now it’s moving forward now i can fit again why can’t you turn it off if like me you don’t want to crush the legs of your friends and passengers you

Should be able to go to the interior over here choose the seats here it is that’s the convenient entry function it’s not very convenient i’d like to turn it off please no this function is unavailable please fix that so what’s the lowdown the price in australia is sixty six thousand nine hundred ninety dollars yes it is expensive for a golf and on top of that if

You want to option the stereo and the sunroof the only options available in australia the price goes up then you’ve got dealer delivery you’re looking at somewhere between 75 and 80 000 yes it is a lot of money but so is everything i just had a look second hand for mark seven golfs the previous model and their asking price for some 2020 models with 50 000 k’s on

The clock are 70 000 the price of everything components computers technology and cars has gone through the roof and this is no exception what i don’t like it’s super quiet from the factory um we don’t get an alternative exhaust option like they do overseas that’s something that i kind of think would be a good option but something that’s easy to change yourself

I don’t like the look of the chrome tips on the exhaust or the shape of them chrome mirror caps i’m not a big fan of them either even on the black cars they’re chrome i don’t understand how the color works with that the air con is an extra press i don’t play with my fan a lot i don’t play with the seats and all the heated stuff but i do turn the air conditioning

On and off it used to be a button now you press the climate button then air conditioning on and off it’s just something to get used to but it’s not a big deal and the other thing is the car always starts in sports mode even if you leave it in comfort mode you turn it off turn it straight back on it’s on sports mode so what do i like i like the interior i like the

Tech some people have spoken about the interior the plastic feels cheap i don’t care about any of that at all i’ve had subaru stis they’re cheap they’re fun they work i have no care about plastic whatsoever the performance is great i think the rear end of the car looks really good i’m not a fan of the front yet i haven’t got used to the kind of like little winglet

Things on the edge of the lights what do you think of the tron light bar the cooled seats are awesome the stereo sounds great and i like the lighting effects on the new turbo there’s a lot to love with the all-new mark 8 golf r sure there’s a few teething issues but there are huge leaps in regards to the technology and the performance straight out of the box is

Truly breathtaking the drift mode is heaps of fun and its trackability is ballistic the real question is would i buy one and the answer is simply yes in fact i already have and i can’t wait for it to arrive that is my take on the market golf r i hope you liked it if you want to support the show you can get merchandise from mightycarmods.com and see you next time

For some more mad car modifications all right so it’s not day-to-day luxury it’s day-to-day comfort sorry i mean i’m so okay i’m an actor i’m just yeah i know so i’ll tell you internal battle all the time good day yes it’s marty from carpet from carpet the all-new mark viii golf r i just don’t know if the emotions there it redefines comfort i get comfort with

Luxurious nappa leather seats heated and cooled yeah apple carplay can you do some push-ups please just give yourself a pump sorry man i’m sorry i’m so sorry no come on man all right now let me just clean your glasses i just didn’t want to get wet because it looked weird all right there we go it’s cool my agent said you’re paying me your agents are try

Again all new market golf r redefines day-to-day comfort okay right

Transcribed from video
MK8 Golf R | The Good, The Bad & The Ugly By Mighty Car Mods