Whats it like to live with a Volkswagen Arteon R-Line 4MOTION in Malaysia?

Volkswagen Malaysia wants to play the premium game, but that means they’re going to compete directly against brands like BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Do they have what it takes? Well, their flagship Arteon R-Line 4MOTION has a couple of things to say about that.

The car has become a little bit of a status symbol some brands have even become a measure of success where if you’re driving them it means that you’ve made it in life and volkswagen malaysia they want to be one of those brands now i personally find that a little bit weird because volkswagen literally means the people’s car but that’s not the point besides they

Don’t plan to accomplish this by selling you golfs and polos instead they want to do it with this bad boy this is the volkswagen archeon r line 4motion and coming in at just over 250 000 ringgit it’s going straight for the bmw 3 series and mercedes-benz c-classes lunch money but it’s one thing to want to do it and another thing to actually be able to do it you

See cars at this price point aren’t just utilitarian vehicles of labor anymore they need to be a little special and a big part of that starts with how it drives the good news is that if it’s performance you’re looking for the rton r line 4motion has plenty of power 276 horsepower to be precise and if you’re wondering if that’s enough power for a car like this

The answer is yes combined with the seven speed dsg dual clutch transmission there’s very rarely anything on the road you can’t leave behind when you bury your right foot the power feels like it’s always there even when you’re chilling low in the rev range and that’s because according to vw you get the full grunt of the archon’s 350 newton meters of torque at just

1700 rpm but if you truly want that instant response you’ll have to switch the gearbox into its manual mode and do the gears yourself with the pedal shifter because in anything other than manual there’s always a short delay between when your foot hits the floor and when it gets going still it’s easy to just put a bunch of power in a car and make it go really fast

In a straight line what i was perhaps more impressed with was how even though the arteon is such a big car it seems to handle almost like it’s on rails steering is sharp and responsive and the car feels planted with plenty of grip to spare even when i was hitting the corners as hard as i dared and i think that’s mostly down to how the power is being sent to the

Road unlike a comparable bmw or merc the arteon doesn’t send its power to just the rear wheels it uses vw’s four-motion all-wheel drive system that can distribute power to all four wheels when the car needs it to keep it from losing traction and sure some might say that that’s boring because you know a true driver’s car should be rear-wheel drive but honestly as

Someone who has had no professional training i definitely appreciate that the seemingly inexhaustible amount of grip when i was hooing it through the mountain lords but you shouldn’t mistake the rto and r line for a sports car despite the low seating position and large 19-inch wheels i don’t get the sense that it was built for the racetrack i’d say it’s more

Like a gt car something built to crush long distances in luxurious comfort and i think for the most part it does just that you see despite feeling so planted on twisty roads the archon is actually very comfortable on the highway it’s quiet and unflinching and on uneven b-roads the ride is supple without feeling numb and the inside well it’s great much like the

Tiguan i reviewed last everything in here feels very well put together but on the arteon it’s like they turned the dial up just a tiny bit the speakers for example now come with harman kardon audio and a 12 speaker system with a base box in the boot unsurprisingly it sounds really good for car speakers full connectivity also sees the usual suspects of wireless

Apple carplay and android auto while infotainment is taken care of by a fully digital cluster and center console both of which have smooth refresh rates and good visibility even under direct sunlight mood lighting has also been taken up a notch with even more lights and a color bar to really dial in the color you want then there’s also the fact that there is so

Much space in here i think you’ll easily be able to fit four people even if they’re on the tall side and you won’t have to worry about bumping shoulders in the bends oh and did i mention the fact that you also get a 563 liter boot at the back complete with built-in grocery hooks and mounting points for a luggage net what about the fact that you can also fold down

The rear seats when you want to carry really long stuff there’s even a tiny little hatch in the middle of the seats that you can pop open to quickly grab something from the boot and if your hands are occupied you can use the foot sensor to open the boot with a swipe of your foot under the archers bumper though you can’t do the same motion to close it again instead

You’ll have to use the buttons so i guess make sure your hands are occupied when you need to close it then there are the front seats you know although they definitely look more sporty than comfortable they feel plenty comfortable with a lot of adjustability in fact the driver’s seat even has a basic massage function which i did find handy on long journeys to keep

The stiffness in my back at bay the only downside is that you know the combination of a low seating position a huggy seat and b pillar position means that getting out of this car isn’t really super elegant but i guess that’s the price you have to pay to maintain that low swooping roof line and honestly i’m not even mad just look at it the gentle coupe inspired

Sloping rear the frameless windows aggressive grill and this lapis blue colorway it is a stunner and i think stunning should be the word you use to describe an aspirational car but while i think the arteon is very volkswageny in a way that’s good it’s also very volkswageny in a way that is bad the most obvious of which is in the form of its autonomous safety features

This was a big criticism of mine when i reviewed the tiguan all space r line and it remains to be a pain point in the arteon r line 4 motion though i will admit to a lesser degree that’s because this car does include some safety features like blind spot detection rear cross traffic alerts and lane keep assistance but there is still no autonomous emergency braking

Why this car has freaking lane keep assist okay that will actively steer you back into lane when you veer over the lines but for some reason it doesn’t have like a b for traffic jams and then there’s the fact that even though this car looks built for long road trips there is no radar guided cruise control you just get like a really basic cruise control system like

Come on but i think by far the worst thing they’ve done to this car is equip it with capacitive touch controls on the steering wheel now i thought it was okay when i spent you know that hot minute with the new golfs but you know living with this it’s terrible there’s just not enough tactility or definition in the controls to work when you want to use them without

Looking at them the volume controls have no separation between them for volume up or volume down and yes you can slide on them but you can’t slide and hold to continuously increase the volume like really what’s the benefit of going touch here i review smartphones for a living and even i can’t stand these clutch controls on the wheel if you’re on the topic of things

That i don’t like about the cabin i have to talk about this silver strip on the dashboard when i first got into this car at night i thought wow this looks cool and that’s like a really nice premium touch and you know all that nonsense but then when i drove it during the day i realized now that having a shiny reflective piece on the dashboard was a terrible idea

Because it seems to reflect all of the sun’s blinding light directly into your eyeballs though i have to say that i think the biggest adjustment i had to make when i was you know trying to live with this car is just getting used to how long this car is from end to end this car is over 4860 millimeters long to put that into perspective this car is a hundred and

Sixty millimeters longer than the seven seater tiguan all space r line and that’s a bit of a problem because in combination with how low this car is suddenly it’s like all the parking lots feel too short and my ass is always sticking out a little bit vw does try to make things like parking and going up tight ramps easier by including a 360 degree camera and this

Really cool flip out reverse camera but it’s kind of low res i was driving the new toyota corolla cross recently and that 360 degree camera is way nicer to use than this one and that car costs half as much as a result i just ended up using my mirrors like a low-tech person yeah now at the end of the day are any of these issues deal breakers for the artsyon r

Line no i don’t think so this is a good car it’s a great car especially for the money i guess the only question is has volkswagen done enough for the rton that it can compete with the heritage and the prestige of something like a bmw 3 series or you know a mercedes c-class and unfortunately i i don’t think that they have and i think a big part of that is because

Of this batch right here it’s just not a three-pointed star and it’s not an ultimate driving machine it’s just a people’s car but that i don’t think is any fault of the arteon you see mercedes and bmw have spent time and money and effort to associate their brands with luxury or performance you know they’re not just making cars and selling them they’re selling their

Customers on a lifestyle the idea of success and unfortunately for vw they just haven’t done that yet but here’s my counterpoint to that after spending a week living with this car a part of me is starting to feel like this is actually the thinking man’s luxury sedan think about it it’s more powerful than a competition it’s more spacious it’s more comfortable i think it

Also looks way better and plus that grip from that four motion system but you know i’m not here to tell you how to spend your 250 000 ringgit it’s a lot of money you’re free to spend it however you want and live with all the consequences what i will say though is that if you have that kind of money to buy a car i think you’d be a fool to not at least get into one

Of these and give it a go foreign you

Transcribed from video
What's it like to live with a Volkswagen Arteon R-Line 4MOTION in Malaysia? | Review By SoyaCincauliveBroadcastDetails{isLiveNowfalsestartTimestamp2022-02-22T040014+0000endTimestamp2022-02-22T041545+0000}