2022 Volkswagen Golf R vs Audi SQ2, Hyundai i30N Sedan and Toyota GR Yaris Rallye

Andy Enright steers Volkswagen's new 2022 Golf R into a comparison against some simultaneously unlikely but entirely appropriate rivals: its stablemate the Audi SQ2, Hyundai's new i30 N Sedan, and the future-classic GR Yaris Rallye.

It's hard to impress Georg Kacher. When it comes to new cars, the doyen of German car journos has been there, done it and got the XXXL t-shirt. So when Volkswagen let him loose in a Golf R for the first international drive, we got a bit excited because old Georg had got a bit excited.

“An excellent and cohesive hot hatch” he effused in our first international drive. “Awesome where it counts – on twisty back roads.”

Consider our curiosity well and truly piqued.

What was quite clear from Georg’s drive and Curt Dupriez’s quick taste on track at Sydney Motorsport park was that the Golf R was going to knock over the likes of the BMW M135i xDrive and the Mercedes-AMG A35 without breaking too much of a sweat, so rather than line up a largely ceremonial sacrifice, we thought laterally.

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Rather than attempt to put up a like-for-like contender, of which its more expensive and less dynamic Audi S3 cousin seems the only thing likely to get close, we decided to pick three other vehicles that tease the thread off into neatly divergent directions.

Should you want something more hardcore, how about the Toyota GR Yaris Rallye? Something easier to live with? We’ve got Audi’s SQ2 to see if jacking up an S3 a few inches has that much of an effect on its dynamic capability. If the Golf R’s $66k asking price seems a bit steep, we’ve also procured something that’s a little less of an ask in the slinky shape of the $49k Hyundai i30 Sedan N.

First the elephant in the room needs to be addressed, and that’s the price of the Golf R. It only seems like yesterday that we were being heartily impressed by the $47,490 Mk7.5 Golf R Grid and yet now we’re being asked to hand over 39 per cent more for this Mk8 version. Well, not only is this Mk8 better equipped, more powerful and fitted with a DSG transmission to boot, when you start canvassing rivals for it, it doesn’t look particularly unreasonable.

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The less powerful BMW M135i xDrive is $71,900 and the Mercedes-AMG A35 is $77,868. Maybe we had it too good back then, but right here and now, the Golf R’s price is - in relative terms at least - not the issue many think.

Before we proceed, it’s worth pausing for a moment to acknowledge that, yes, the $71k Audi S3 is probably the ‘correct’ VAG product to put up against the AMG and the BMW but the Golf’s cleverer drive dynamics lift it into a different league even than the Audi.

You probably know the headline numbers of the Golf R by now, but to reiterate, you get 235kW at 5600-6500rpm and a healthy 400Nm at 2000 to 5600rpm. These figures are about as reliable as a pollie’s election promise, with independent dyno tests putting the Golf R’s power at the crank somewhere around 250kW.

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It feels markedly quicker than the 218kW Audi SQ2. Unfortunately we weren’t able to test the cars on our home drag strip as it was closed for resurfacing, but a private facility was secured to assess the Golf’s ability off the line.

Readers have asked what to expect in terms of real world performance and should you just mash the throttle to the floor from a standstill, there’s a gentle and slightly baggy clutch actuation as it gently deploys drive. This will result in a near-metronomic 5.4sec sprint to 100km/h.

Activating the launch control nets far superior results but it involves quite a process. Switch the vehicle into Sport automatic for its gearbox mode, then select Vehicle, Exterior and then swipe for Brakes via the touchscreen. Choose Brakes and then select ESC Sport or Off and respond to the on-screen prompt. If you're a power user, you can shortcut that process using gesture control and a swipe down.

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If the wheel is straight, the Golf R will then offer a launch control start and it is genuinely brisk. We recorded a 4.4sec sprint to 100km/h on a non-prepared surface, which lends credence to the suspicion that the Golf’s packing quite a few kilowatts.

Our road test route took in the 165 fiendish twists and turns of Reefton Spur, about as brutal and condensed a test of ride and handling imaginable. The 15-point adaptive suspension of the Golf R ranges excels here. At its softest, it still offers strong body control and very good bump absorption.

At the other extreme, it’s still useable, but surface imperfections on corner exit can trigger traction and stability control interventions. Should you want to, you can go three gradations more comfortable than the Comfort setting and three racier than Race via the Individual pane.

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The special Nürburgring mode is a great compromise, softening off the suspension enough to let the car breathe with the road while still delivering sharp throttle and steering.

It’s exactly the sort of setting most keen drivers will use for typical Aussie roads and affords far better grip post-apex than stiffening everything to the max. The incremental improvements are everywhere on this car, the front brakes now feature twin-pot calipers clamping down on big 357mm discs (up from 340mm).

The Golf R’s updated all-wheel drive architecture ditches the previous model's centre coupling in favour of a duo of oil-bathed electronically controlled clutch packs, one for each of the rear half-shafts. Easing the clutches in and out allows for fine manipulation of torque distribution between the left and right rear wheels but, despite the presence of a Drift Mode, only 50 per cent of available torque ever goes backwards.

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Find an open area to play in and said Drift Mode feels a little artificial, any modulation of throttle or corrective lock tending to neuter the yaw response.

It’s not something we’d recommend on road, as blending from part to full throttle can instigate a sudden transition to yaw at potentially serious velocities. One curiosity of Drift Mode is that in its default setting there remains an element of stability control safety net. That's probably for the best.

Inspect the torque curve for the Golf R and it’s about as peaky as the Nullarbor which means that third gear easily covers all but the very tightest corners at Reefton. On corner exit, the R offers just the faintest impression of power-down neutrality which is enough to keep you engaged.

Switching into ESC Sport mode allows a smidge of rotation on the brakes into corners. The 235/35 ZR19 Bridgestone Potenza S005 tyres generate a fair amount of squeal when pushed but, when combined with a surprisingly meaty EPAS calibration, deliver a reassuring front end helped by a lighter front subframe and increased negative camber.

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Gearbox logic is aggressive in Nürburgring, and should you want to marshal the seven-speed DSG yourself, Volkswagen has fitted longer wheel-mounted shift paddles, replacing the Golf’s usual pair of tiny tabs behind the wheel spokes. Shifts are crisp but the software can be a little reticent to deliver a downchange to anywhere near the top of the rev band.

It sounds good too, with a decent bass tone at idle and a hollow, gravelly growl through 4500rpm but then doesn’t reach much in the way of a crescendo. Perhaps that’s an unreasonable expectation for a turbocharged inline four.

After all, the cast iron-blocked EA888, here in Evo4 guise, is an engine with great inherent NVH suppression and some of the sound is piped into the cabin via the Soundaktor symposer, but the differences between modes are relatively subtle. To find out how much, switch the engine sound into Pure via the Individual mode and you can hear for yourself what it sounds like without any artificial assistance. Better is my read.

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The interesting thing about the Golf R is that upon first acquaintance it seems to be a car that’s either for the very low or the very high involvement user. Yes, there is a constituency of buyers who want nothing more than the quickest and most expensive Golf to burble about in.

Then there are those who want to lean into every technical aspect, to understand the subtleties of the drive modes, how the car is deploying drive, to put the effort in to embrace the algorithms. Those who crave purity might well abhor this process, but there is reward to it.

What’s more, it’s possible for the same buyer to enjoy both extremes of the car’s personality. There’s nuance and subtlety to it which, ironically, is the criticism of least resistance aimed at the Golf R by those who’ve never taken time to get to know it.

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But is it a case of diminishing returns? Do you get 90 per cent of the result for 80 per cent of the outlay by choosing a Golf GTI? Or, if you prefer, for 74 per cent of the outlay if you choose the Hyundai i30 Sedan N? We’d been impressed by the Hyundai at this year’s Sports Car of the Year event, especially on road, and were curious as to whether its striking duality of character could offer a convincing alternative to the vivacious Volkswagen.

In terms of how it negotiates a road like Reefton, it’s certainly the closest of the three contenders to the Golf, and its bump suppression and the polish of its rebound damping can feel very similar to the VW.

Our first action on a challenging road is usually to wick the car up into its N Mode and then assess whether the suspension then needs softening off into a custom setting. This N Mode tab switches the stability control into ESC Sport setting and this was a bit of an eye opener.

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On one downhill corner, a throttle lift sent the i30 significantly sideways before being caught by the driver which was a hugely more relaxed approach to vehicle stability than we were expecting.

Yes, BMW will tell you that it is possible to spin a car with its halfway house M Dynamic Mode, but that involves a deliberate press of the stability control button. Most will engage the i30’s N Mode just to access the dramatic exhaust crackle map and maybe not realise quite what a safety net they’re ceding as a result. On a circuit it’d be huge fun. On a mountain road, it’s something else.

The only front-driver of this quartet suffers little as a result of its layout, in the dry at least. Traction is good and we’d previously achieved a 5.95sec 0-100km/h time from the four-door i30 in less than ideal conditions, but it’d be tricky to match the 5.3sec manufacturer claim.

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Despite its slightly artificial acoustics, there’s real quality to the way the i30 N dismantles a series of corners. The steering and body control are largely excellent but there is a fly in the ointment. The gearing is such that on this road almost every corner seems to be a coin toss between running into the limiter at the top of second and having a slightly flaccid throttle response in third.

You find yourself snicking up into third at the redline and dropping the needle to 4700rpm at which point the engine has exited its peak torque but is still 800rpm shy of peak power. Shortshifting only exacerbates how far you are from the power peak. Upshift at 6000rpm and you’re then plugged into only 160 of the available 206kW.

Tighter gearing here may help, as you find yourself switching between manual and automatic; an indication that what you’re experiencing isn’t satisfying the requirement at hand.

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It’s a minor gripe as there remains huge bandwidth to the i30 Sedan N, but the position of its performance envelope is left-shifted compared to the tighter and more focused Golf. In short, as good as the Hyundai is, it’s easy to see how you could reasonably justify the additional expense on the German car.

Some may well emerge from a test drive in the Golf R and hanker after something a little more visceral, preferring something with a bit more flint about its persona. Toyota’s GR Yaris Rallye might have the least amount of engine here, but it always feels as if it has the most.

Every drive is an event. Objectively speaking there is so much wrong with the Rallye. The high driving position is idiotic, I cannot physically fit my foot between the clutch pedal and the firewall, the pedal spacing is clumsy, the gearshift is notchy, the suspension can quickly run out of ideas and the vanishing point through left-handers is horribly obscured by the vast rear-view mirror, requiring the Yaris Hunch, where you find yourself folding yourself forward through tight left handers such that you hang from the steering, your upper back no longer adequately supported by the seat.

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It’s hopeless. Despite that, the Yaris is infectious, strangely loveable and huge fun.

The engine itself is a highlight. The 1.6-litre three-pot is a work of genius, making the Golf’s powerplant feel a little anodyne in comparison. Likewise, the sheer thrust of the Yaris when peak power is deployed at apex offers a drama all of its own.

The damping is the weakest of the bunch, with certain bumps and compressions that the other three would routinely shrug off causing the short-wheelbase Toyota to skip and bang, occasionally incurring a flicker of stability control. Because of its slightly brittle ride quality and a manual shift that requires a clodhopping approach to heel and toe downchanges, it’s never an easy car to flow smoothly.

The gaps between gears here is even wider than the Hyundai, but there’s an acoustic payback with the Yaris that helps sweeten the deal, aided by superior power-to-weight and torque-to-weight metrics.

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It’s likely that the forthcoming GR Corolla will give the Golf R something more aligned to chew on, but there’s little doubt that the $54,500 Yaris delivers the ferocity that the chamfered and polished Volkswagen lacks. Which leaves the Audi SQ2.

Delivering a small SUV to a competition that includes some of the most focused performance cars that sensible money will buy seemed like a bit of a stretch, but of all the cars here, the Audi was probably the biggest and most favourable surprise.

It was riding on SUV tyres, in this case 235/40 R18 Bridgestone Turanzas which did the steering feel few favours, and its pace certainly didn’t feel that of a vehicle with five per cent of the Golf R’s power and torque. There’s also a valid point to be made that says that with a 355-litre luggage capacity with the rear seats in place, the Audi doesn’t offer any practicality benefit over the 374-litre carrying capacity of the Golf.

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Nevertheless, there are three reasons why the baby Audi crossover endeared itself to all who drove it. While it lacks a certain tactility and its Haldex all-wheel drive doesn’t offer the tricks of the Golf’s more sophisticated architecture, it’s predictable and benign on a challenging road, inputs always creating a predictable output.

Secondly, the added ride height means that you never feel as if you need to sacrifice throttle commitment for road imperfections. The SQ2 just powers through anything in terms of relief or sharp camber change, whereas in the other cars you might ease back so as not to potentially scrape the chin. Thirdly, the tyre itself generates a fuzzily finite edge to the handling envelope.

You find yourself driving to the limits of the Turanzas and then giving consideration to how you can give the vehicle every chance to deploy its power cleanly without the soft traction control butting in. There’s real satisfaction to be gained from driving the SQ2 well and to do so engenders significant admiration for just what Audi has achieved.

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The higher hip point of the SQ2 affords a good view of the road ahead, despite it sitting 20mm lower on its springs than the rest of the Q2 range. The suspension relies on passive dampers but it’s a very good tune, offering well-judged primary and secondary responses. Body control is naturally a little looser than the Golf because physics happen, but for a higher riding vehicle, the compromise isn’t in any way egregious.

Like the Golf, the SQ2 sports an EA888 2.0-litre under the bonnet, mated to a seven-speed DSG ‘box. Its drive modes are simpler to get to grips with but even in dynamic the throttle response isn’t particularly sharp. The gearbox calibration in Dynamic also seems to like 2400rpm, repeatedly plucking a gear from the ether to keep you there.

You’ll need at least 3500rpm on the board for the SQ2 to feel genuinely sprightly. Take control manually and things are better, but it’s very much a pseudo manual mode, the software keen to either upshift or downshift if you find yourself on the wrong side of an if/then conditional.

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The Individual mode allows you to play with the configuration of gearbox, steering, sound and adaptive cruise assist, with all of these attributes able to be set into Comfort, Auto and Dynamic settings. Bigger brakes with better cooling would help on a road like this, the stoppers getting a bit hot and smoky but Reefton Spur is an extreme assignment.

All three contenders emerged with their reputations intact, offering a fascinating array of options for keen drivers. Ultimately, however, the Golf’s overlap in the big Venn diagram is so great that it’s hard not to recommend it.

If your requirements are more extreme in any of these directions, a case can be made for any of the three but, in the real world, more often than not the Golf R wins. The dynamic benefits of the new all-wheel-drive system massively outweigh the UX shortcomings of the haptic controls and touchscreen interface.

It’s an exceptional hot hatch that more than merits the big build up. The forthcoming GR Corolla will need to be very good indeed to level with it. Coming between the demise of the last-generation Civic Type R and the entry of the hot Corolla, the Golf R is, for the time being at least, the class benchmark.

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SCORING

VOLKSWAGEN GOLF R: 4.5/5

AUDI SQ2: 4.0/5

HYUNDAI i30 SEDAN N: 4.0/5

TOYOTA GR YARIS RALLYE: 4.0/5

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Vehicle specifications