This is All-Wheel Drive VS. Front-Wheel Drive, and this week, its in Volkswagen’s top hot hatches. The Golf R and the Golf GTI… On a frozen lake. Subscribe to see a more detailed road test of each of these cars!
Where is he yup you know james where are you i’m at the airport oh no our flight leaves in like five minutes oh joel thomas just happened to get you’re watching throttle house i’m thomas and yes sadly james is away today he’s actually back in england that’s right he’s actually english it’s his birthday and what i was gonna have you do is subscribe for his birthday
I thought that would be fun but what would be even better is if you actually spammed his instagram inbox with pictures of pt cruisers he doesn’t know i’m telling you to do this now volkswagen has flown me out to montreal so that we can drive the entire 4motion line up on the ice but today for science what i’m going to do is put the golf r against the gti on the
Snowy track to see if you actually need all-wheel drive to have fun ok let’s start here on the circuit with this the golf gti rabbit the rabbit nameplate has been brought back this year in the gti is all the better for it the electronic diff is now standard across the gti line and this one has adjustable dampers and a dsg now if you want details about this car go
Watch our road tests because today i’m going to focus on whether or not you need the golf r to truly have fun at the limit all right in the gti now this is a front-wheel drive car obviously in fact it is the front-wheel drive car so if i turn in and use the weight transfer it just lifts off the throttle get some weight over the front i’m getting liftoff oversteer in
Almost every corner so the key is to go in too fast and lift this is kind of bully it into a little bit of a slide be honest i got in this car thinking like okay this this review is gonna be about all the all-wheel drive ends up being better we’re gonna go drift the golf r in a second but for right now to be honest have fun with cti okay what does it actually feel
Like it here well the steering for being on ice is actually got a good amount of weight to it it there’s there’s a decent amount of feedback actually a lot more than i thought that was going to be the transmission feels a little bit sluggish but i’m keeping it in second gear you know what here here’s a handbrake for you though and you use the front-wheel drive to
Pull it out okay i’m having fun already alright reverse entry ready oh the dsc kicks in no matter what it’s even off and it kicks in alright if the handbrake counter-steer on the throttle and it pulls it out i’m having fun alright going in that’s too tight and brake turn a little bit of handbrake keep your thumb on it this is me oversteer in a gti so the gti can
Be a fun little car on the ice but it does have a rather imposing big brother in this one is as red as an imperial guard in fact the golf r comes in a spectrum of colours so you can’t say vw isn’t trying to make the are playful looking now the golf r has a more aggressive tune on that 2-liter more exhaust noise in the cabin and more importantly an all-wheel drive
System the system is front based but it has a rear electro-hydraulic differential with a primed coupling pump that is ready to send torque to the rear at a 50/50 split now as you saw however i did have a lot of fun in just the front-wheel drive golf but you see sometimes you do want all-wheel drive why well for one very good reason um hello hey how’s it going fine
A little bit me i mean you haven’t crossed you have you well not yet but really appreciate the call right now okay bye gigi i was honestly fun i liked it but let’s try the golf r all right immediately on the ice it puts the power down very obviously better transitions are not the easiest thing to do when you’re talking to a camera anyway golf r doesn’t put as
Much power to the rear as you kind of would want right it sounds better but once you get it into a slide it does do some four wheel slides it’s a totally different game doing four wheel skids i’m so used to rear-wheel drive but to retrain my brain to do this see even i got a little bit of electronic interference even in the golf r but not that much okay okay all
Right so the gti is fun the golf r is more fun you can’t get away from that is it worth extra money though i don’t know let’s take it on a figure-eight okay now the golf r has a 4motion all-wheel drive system like all volkswagens do and the thing that got me before was that the focus rs in comparison to it would felt like it puts so much more power to the rear and
It felt like to me that the golf r couldn’t really do a full drift you know what i mean so basically i’m going to take this out on what is effectively a large drift circle and i’m gonna see if i can sustain a drift in this golf r alright here we go getting it into a drift was not quite as easy as i thought it was going to be doesn’t want to send power to the rear
Like my brain tells it it should but basically the trick is to with your golf our turn in sharply give it a big poop get yourself sideways and then give it a whole crap-ton and we’re doing a four-wheel drift in the golf r it’s four-wheel drive you can get hilarious angle and continue there’s no there’s no feel in the foot it’s so i see i don’t have any idea where
My front tires are pointing so i figure i go which way might is i’m using the front tires to create angle as well so if i don’t know which way they’re going i’ve lost track of my wheel look good that’s just cuz i’m an idiot weird thing about all-wheel drive is that you don’t actually want to turn into the slide as much we’ll watch ken block do this trip he’s got
People tires pointing straight i played around for quite a while the speeds weren’t very high because the surface was so slick but it was still a lot of fun and for me it was more practice in all-wheel drive drifting however i decided to have another go in the gti just to see what it was like going back to front wheel drive okay we’re back out in the gti for one
Last little hoon before we conclude now this is the golf wrap i absolutely love this car it’s blue and as a rabbit badge it’s it’s fun to drive it’s great to live with i absolutely adore this car you’ve probably seen mine at james’s review of it and it versus the veloster n and all that now out here in the snow on the ice all wheel drive is more fun and i think you
Knew that concluded was coming however i don’t be too predictable and i want to say that for the most part and for the majority of the time front-wheel drive a golf gti is all you need and you have to trust me when i say when you get these on a dry track and you can’t do any sort of power oversteer when it’s all down to the balance of the car and just the chassis
The gti becomes just as fun as the golf r in my opinion on a track because it’s all about weight transfer it’s all about balance in the car and these cars are well done they’re they’re they’re feisty that’s how they feel like look at this right now this is me over steering without handbrake in a front-wheel drive car once you dial that in and figure out how to do
That that’s all you need you can laugh you can have fun there it is that’s that’s me doing oversteer the car will actually help you a little bit it will create a little bit of yaw for you which is what’s happening right now and i’m having a good time honestly really well what more do you need on a regular basis you save money you save gas get the gti golf r if you
Can afford it obviously it’s better it’s everything the gti is but more power and all-wheel drive but if you’re like oh i’m gonna save or i can’t get one don’t be upset you can get the gti and i promise that you will be happy all right thanks for watching throttle house next week or even later this week normal programming will resume when james returns to england
Make sure you dm him pictures of pt cruisers he hates the pt cruiser and i think it would be hilarious if he got a thousand bucks crucifixes so please do he’s gonna kill me goodbye
Transcribed from video
2019 Volkswagen Golf GTI vs Golf R // Do You Need AWD? By Throttle House
