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Hi how are you matt watson here from car wow and i’m here with the new volkswagen golf gti and in this video i’m going to talk you through all the changes over the normal golf to the exterior design the interior and of course the mechanical and performance upgrades i’m going to take it for a drive see if it’s any fun and i’m going to launch it to see how quick
It really is from naught to 60 miles an hour now before we get into all of that please make sure you subscribe to this channel and hit the bell icon to turn on notifications on that way you will not miss a single upload buying a new car then head to car wow and my team will help you find your next car at a fair price car wow your one stop car buying comparison
Site before we get into the review let’s talk about money you see this new golf gti starts from just under thirty three and a half thousand pounds but even though it’s brand new you can still save almost two thousand pounds off on through car wow and you can see how much you can save on this car or any car for that matter by clicking on the pop out banner up there
To get a car wire alternatively after you’ve watched this video you can just google help me car wow to go to car wire me and my team will help you choose the right car for you and get it for a fair price so what do you get for your extra cash over a normal goal for this gti well in terms of the exterior design it does stand out because you get a more aggressive
Front bumper with this honeycomb effect here you’ve also got the classic gti red striping and it runs all the way across the front of the car into the light speaking of which these lights they’re matrix leds so they’ll blank out part of their beam so they don’t dazzle on coming drivers another cool feature about this is that you actually have an led strip there
Which also lights up thing is though this car’s face it’s almost like it’s got a monobrow it sort of reminds me of bert from sesame street here at the side the gti has 18 inch alloy wheels as standard though you can upgrade to some 19s you also get red brake calipers some red gti badging and these side skirts they’re just made out of cheap rough black plastic
Though it does actually contrast quite nicely with the white paint work this look a bit mean as does the fact that it sits low to the ground than a standard golf here at the back you get a roof spoiler the back window is also tinted out by 65 and that once again works well with this white paint you get led tail lights gti badging more aggressive deeper rear bumper
I was just looking underneath the bumper to see if it had a diffuser and it seems to be this weird hole there i’m not sure if it’s meant to be there or if some bit of paneling has just dropped off you can’t see it from this angle anyway what you can see though the twin chrome exhaust pipes which i really like the look of and they’re real thank god for that in
Fact i think this angle is the best angle of the new gti it’s really nice looking what do you reckon let me know in the comments here on the inside the gtr has some key changes over the normal golf the most obvious are the sport seats so they’ve got integrated headrests big side bolsters and the classic gti tartan pattern you’ve also got a sport steering wheel
It’s nice to hold you’ve got some red accents on it and the gti badging there if you look really carefully you’ll see there’s a honeycomb pattern here on the interior trim and on the door you’ve also got some aluminium pedals the starter button glows red trying to encourage you to start the engine then you’ve got some red accents there led lighting just on the
Dash and whenever you see the car on the infotainment screen it is of course the gti in the color that you picked it also you get digital dials as standard in this car and you get gti dials look they’re red it’s lovely it’s quite a lot of rig going on actually in this car stitch it in as well and obviously if you have a manual gear selector you’ll get some red
Stitching on the gear gator does it feel sufficiently sporty enough i think just about really not too over the top very gti as for the rest of the interior it’s golf business as usual so fairly nice quality easily laid out but some annoying touch sensitive buttons rather than normal buttons and the ones that looks like i was in stop start mode and then when i
Put the climate on it started the engine and went crazy back to the buttons on the steering wheel which i absolutely hate in fact they are awful in this car excuse my french but they are like they’re touch sensitive so you swipe them but you can also press them and so you’re never sure exactly what you’re supposed to do i hate them i just do i’m sorry here in the
Back seats you also get the gti specific trim which is nice another thing i’ve noticed is that as well as the normal seat back pocket you’ve also got two other ones here for your mobile phone so you can have a mobile phone in there and a mobile phone in there so you can watch one with each eye other than that it’s exactly the same as a normal golf so it’s fairly
Comfy and roomy back here but if you want more details on the practicality and things like door bins and how easy it is to fit a child seat and even what the infotainment systems like to use and what you can fit in the car’s boot then click on the pop-out banner up there to watch my full in-depth video review of the normal golf it’s all the same really because
The golf gti is front wheel drive and not all-wheel drive like the golf r you don’t have a rear differential at the back so the boot capacity is exactly the same as a normal golf at 381 liters though if you really want a huge boot on your hot hatch you’re going to need a skoda octavia vrs and if you click on the pop-out band up there you can check out my review
Of that car and that brings me on to five or nine things about the golf gti on most cars the colour of the dials change depending on which driving mode you’re in but in this car they’re always on red even the background is red so you think you’re constantly in sports mode even though you’re not the only way you can know which mode you’re in is this little graphic
Down here which just cycles through between like a picture why does it change the color of this background i know it’s a gt and it has to be red but not everything has to be read come on this car may have a sports exhaust but due to european noise regulations it sounds a bit nah let’s see what i mean i’ll rev it the soft limiter doesn’t help it’s enough for that
It’s boring it’d be much better to have the driving mode button on the steering wheel rather than there because you have to look down to press it and you really do have to look down because it’s not a physical button and it’s touch sensitive you’ve got to make sure that you’re actually pressing the right thing i want to show you this as well look but put some
Pressure on there the whole panel just clicks and moves backwards so much for volkswagen build quality these integrated headrests really block your view if you’re in the back seats god it’s dead annoying in most spotty cars you can turn off the stability control just by pressing a button nice and quick handy if you’re out on track and you suddenly want to have
Some fun on a corner in this car so convoluted you have to go to vehicle select vehicle from that menu swipe across select breaks go to the esc system scroll down to off confirm that you do want it off and finally you’re there and yeah the laps almost over thankfully this car has plenty of cool features to help make up for all this here’s five you get upgraded
Sports brakes over the normal golf also the suspension is tuned as well ever so slightly differently so it’s five percent stiffer at the front and 15 stiff at the back for improved handling the gti gets an electronically controlled limited slip differential as standard and that can send up to 100 of the engine’s power to either front wheel on demand depending on
Which one has the most grip to help drag you out the corner the new body panels and then almost flat underfloor means that this new golf gti is actually 0.3 of the cd more aerodynamic in the old car that will mean something to you if you’re an engineer if you’re not yeah the car features a new aluminium front subframe over the old golf gti this makes the front
End stiffer and the steering more responsive also helps saves a bit of weight three kilos though this car still isn’t particularly light it comes in at 1463 kilograms in total the gti is a two liter four-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine with 245 horsepower and 370 newton meters of torque drives the front wheels via a 6-speed manual gearbox or a 7-speed automatic
With launch control volkswagen says this car can do not to 60 in just 6.3 seconds but i’m going to see for myself it is a bit damp out there but i’ve got launch control automatic gearbox let’s do ready to launch god that was a dreadful start it’s like your grandmother getting off the line well there we go still did not 16 6.5 seconds i’m going to give it another
Go second time lucky come on grip this time still really steady off the line struggling for traction slightly better 6.48 seconds this was dry i’ll be getting below 6.3 for sure because that just grand mars off the line in fact it’s looking a little bit drier here all right here we go oh squirrely steering wheel i guess that’s the problem with front wheel drive
If it’s a bit damp you’re always going to struggle a bit to put your power down in fact if you click on the pop out banner up there on the top right hand corner of the screen you can see a hot hatch that does struggle to put its power back it’s got an awesome all-wheel drive system in fact it’s my favorite car of this year check out the video hot hatches are just
About the launch are they about how they make you feel like on a twisty road so let’s go into manual mode for the gearbox on this gti and hoon it about a bit seems a bit sharp the last gti and you really just grip onto the road this is more fun than any other gti i’ve driven it really is it’s not playful on the throttle like a high-end i30n but it’s really composing
Really quick what it does like though is that edge of precision and the feel from the steering wheel the brake pedal and the manual gearbox that you get from the honda civic type r the question is though should you go for a manual gearbox and i say no the automatic suits this car’s personality better because while it is a fun car it’s not the ultimate driver’s
Hot hatch there’s plenty of others to choose from for that and the manual gearbox on this golf is just so so anyway now let’s find out what this car’s like when you’re not tuning in you’re driving sensibly in town i’m going to put it into comfort settings so it’s lined up the steering reduce the responsiveness of the throttle and because this has the adaptive
Dampers it softened the suspension and now you really do notice a difference it just feels like a normal car it’s very very good over bumps you wouldn’t know it was the sporty model i’m impressed by that sometimes with other cars you don’t feel much of a difference between sport and comfort with this you do now one thing i like about the golf gti is that not
Only is it still responsive it only takes two turns to go from lock to lock so if you want to go around a mini roundabout such as that you don’t have to do too much wheel twirling just makes it easy to live with it wasn’t for all the red everywhere i’d have no idea it was the sports model i really wouldn’t i’m not sure that’s a good thing no one of the greatest
Things about the golf gti compared to other hot hatches is that it’s absolutely brilliant for commuting it just behaves pretty much like a normal car now it comes with travel assist as standard so you’ve got clever cruise control which uses a radar to keep you a safe distance from the car in front and it auto steers to keep you in lane so it just takes a sting a
Long distance drives you should actually hold the wheel and if you don’t it will switch off but there you go you’d have to keep on making those little corrections yourself the seats they’re super comfy as well really good for long journeys and you don’t get much tire noise or wind noise from this car it’s really very good for a sporty vehicle there is one thing
Though when you’re pressing the accelerator you can hear the fake engine noise just droning a little bit like and it’s completely unnecessary i wish i could just turn that off can’t complain about the economy though this thing’s averaging 42 miles per gallon which is epic if you need to overtake people you got the performance look 50 miles an hour floor it here
We go kicks down pretty quick this gear box and they’re 70 straight away you kind of forget that it’s got that pad when you’re just tootling along but it’s there when you need it so then what’s my final verdict on the new volkswagen golf gti should you avoid it should you consider it should you shortlist it or should you just go right ahead and buy it well i
Reckon you should shortlist the gti it’s not the most fun hot hatch but it is a really good all-rounder the only problem is there’ll be an even better all-round hot hatch from volkswagen very soon it’s bigger brother the golf r and i’d probably just have that instead do you know what if you can’t wait for golf r i’ve actually configured an alternative to a golf
R which you can get now with a great offer from car wow if you click on the pop out banner up there you can see what that car is and see what saving i’ve got on it go check it out i hope you all enjoyed the video if you did please give it a like if you’d like to see my in-depth video review of the hyundai i38 click on that window there or the ford focus st click
On that window there you can click on that box you can go to car wow to see how much you can save on new car alternatively just google help me car wow and me and my team will help you choose the right car for you and get it for a fair price from one of our trusted dealers thanks for watching
Transcribed from video
VW Golf GTI 2021 review – is the MK8 the best yet? By carwow
