All-New 2022 VW Golf GTI S Review: Mk8 is Magic!

This is a

2022

Volkswagen Golf GTI 2.0 TS mark 8. and it is the least expensive Golf you can buy in the United States. Mark 8 means it's the eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf and

2022

is the first year you can get it. For 2023, the GTI is largely a carryover, however, Volkswagen made some sleeker LED headlights standard and tweaked the styling a bit. Later on there will also be a 40th Anniversary Edition of the Volkswagen Golf to celebrate 40 years of sales here in the United States. This particular GTI is painted in what is called Reflex Silver Metallic, which is one of three standard paints and one of six paints in total for the GTIS and S, meaning we are actually based on three versions available. in GTI below the SE and Autobahn trims, and that means It's true that we don't have keyless entry to the car or adaptive dampers, but actually even in the standard GTI you get a lot of creature comforts in this car and I'll show you that in a moment my name is Robin Warner, by the way, an experienced.

Engineer and magazine editor, and my 40th special issue has come and gone. I

review

all types of cars, from a 25,000 Ford Maverick to a 425,000 Rolls-Royce Cullinan. I will gladly jump into the BMW M3s of the Honda Accord and freeze and have fun every Now, subscribe and join me. The base price of the 2022 Volkswagen Golf GTI is thirty thousand nine hundred and seventy-five dollars. My test car has some sort of optional extra that's 800 more for the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission Volkswagen calls DSG. It cost thirty-one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five dollars and if you go for the top-of-the-line Volkswagen GTI Autobahn which starts at $39,425, you're fine with all that, I think now is a good time to stop and take a closer look . the exterior and interior of this GTI, the first generation of the Volkswagen Golf GTI came to the United States in 1983 and what we are looking at now is the Mark 8, the eighth generation version of this car, it has definitely grown up but it has also definitely It's gotten more sophisticated and I think it looks really good from the front, you've got this big, bold Volkswagen logo right there and this, I think, really nice, tasteful red stripe that runs across just under the hood.

GTI logo right below that and then we have this really cool hexagonal. The patterned lower grille here really expands the width of this car nicely and adds just the right amount of presence that the Volkswagen GTI deserves, along with these really nice, stylish, and pretty mean looking headlights here, all together. I think it's a great front, this five-door Volkswagen Golf GTI is growing and I'll go ahead and put the dimensions on the screen right now and quickly let you know that I have a full set of specs in the description, but both the front overhangs and rears are quite short and I think this car has a really nice presence low to the ground, its ground clearance is actually less than five inches and it gives you this sleek, elegant two-box shape, the front windshield is very raked and then just have this nice smooth line flowing right into this rear spoiler right here, rear spoilers can be cheesy but this one is subtle and I think it looks nice and tasteful, plus this hatchback design gives it a lot interior space, to which we will arrive. in just a moment, 18 inch aluminum wheels is what you get on the base Volkswagen Golf GTI and those are Pirelli P0 all season tires wrapped around them, you get these nice big red calipers and pretty decent sized brake rotors too, and this I now ride on an aluminum subframe and big brakes are good on a car like this.

It's still relatively light in today's automotive world, but it's getting bigger and weighs over three thousand pounds, so we also have good brakes front and rear. it's just a very good looking car from the rear GTI, just below the Volkswagen, bottom right, very clean lines, sharp looking taillights and true dual exhaust tips, lovely, lovely, since we're back here, might as well opening the hatch and showing you the amount of space we have inside is always a good trick, the clever placement of the switch right there gives you 20 cubic feet of storage behind the second row and you also have an adjustable floor here, so if you want to be a little closer to the bumper line you can actually raise the floor but to get maximum clearance you can lower it like this and if you want more than 20 cubic feet that's pretty easy to do of course foreign and now you have 35 cubic feet of storage and room for two.

Take a look inside. You don't need an SUV to provide space. We have space and we also have these cute seats with plaid stitching. These are cloth seats and they are very, very comfortable. I am 5 feet 11 or 181 centimeters tall. tall and I would say I have about an inch and a half of knee room, plus my legs are bent about 90 degrees, maybe just a touch under and the bottom of the seats is actually quite high so I have decent thigh support. I feel quite comfortable. I also have a good inch of headroom in this car because we don't have a sunroof of any kind to take away from the headroom, so it's a good thing we have a couple of USB Type C charging ports to use right there and yeah , matte pockets. and things like that and we also have pockets here on the top of the seat and yeah, if we don't have a third passenger in the middle, here we have a center armrest and cup holders, how about that?

I'd say it's more important, even in the back seats. You see, we have bolsters on the upper and lower seats. You are not sitting in the seat. You are really sitting in this seat. That's a very important touch. A very important detail. Anyway, let's get to the front, all Golf GTIs have this ambient lighting that you can see around you, but you need to get an SE trim or higher to get keyless entry anyway, as does the second row , we have these beautiful seats with checkered stitching. In the first row, we have them fixed. headrests which I'll talk a little more about in a minute, but much more importantly, we have deep bolstering on both the top and bottom.

I mean, look, that's the full width of my hand on both sides, the seat really supports you. set it very very well now it's an interesting combination of manual and electronic adjustment so you manually adjust the seat height you electronically adjust the seat back and you manually adjust it to fit. It takes a couple of seconds to get used to, but once you do, it's perfectly fine and again requires weight. In this car, that's definitely a good thing: it has tilt and telescopic steering adjustment and it's done manually right there, regular controls on the door, no in-seat memory, it's a 10.25-inch fully digital instrument cluster display and 10.4 inches to the right.

There and right next to it is an eight-inch center console touchscreen. Now, if you go with an SE or Autobahn level GTI, that would be a 10-inch screen. The home button is down here, in front of the Prindle, is the instrument display cluster. illuminated, but Volkswagen gives you a lot of ways to adjust the screen if you want, first of all, if you scroll down here, you can adjust a bunch of settings on this side, if you tap this button here, you can adjust a bunch of things on this side. or if you prefer, you can just press view here and switch between many different options here.

My preferred configuration is the offer on the old side. I admit that you have climate control and it is done digitally here in the On the center console touch screen you can see the temperature, you can also see the stock. I have heated seats and I also have a heated steering wheel. Amongst the plethora of controls you get on this flat-bottomed steering wheel with the GTI logo right down there, you get a heated steering wheel, that's a really nice touch, another really nice touch, you've got two USB Type-C charging ports in there same and this is a chi smartphone.

Wireless touchpad here, as you briefly saw when I started the car, this is anything but standard. Looking at Prindle, you've got a couple of cup holders down here and a cigarette plug style charging port right there and if you want to hold the cup more securely, you just press this button, hey, hey, and it's spring-loaded to give you a size of Fit for the base of your cup and works great. I have to say it's okay. Driving Modes, you get four driving modes and you can access them right here. Eco Comfort Sport and personalized. Also, this car has adjustable stability control, but it's a little buried, so let me show you. where it is briefly first you get to the main menu then you go to the vehicle then you go to brakes this gives you the option for the stability control system and there are three different options activated Sport and off sport keeps the stability control activated but opens the thresholds are a little off it turns it off completely, it requires using launch control yes, this GTI with DSG has launch control and that is also a process.

I'll go over what that process is quickly when it comes time for the acceleration test, which is coming soon I think Volkswagen did a great job with the styling of the interior. I love the ambient lighting. I think they place these two screens very well for the instrument cluster and the touchscreen on the center console and because this car drives so well, it's just a It's a nice place to talk, let's get back to the driving, okay, let's dive into the powertrain starting with the engine this is a 2 liter four cylinder turbocharged engine and it is called yes it has a name EA Triple Eight ev4 and it is worthy of a name this is a very good engine to boot you get 241 horses of force and 273 pound-feet of torque and that maximum torque comes at a very early 1750 RPM.

Volkswagen doesn't tell us specifically how long it maintains that peak torque, but if it comes early, it should hold for a fairly long time. Peak power comes in at a slightly lower 5000 RPM, but this engine revs well beyond that and maintains its power quite well, so don't worry, this evo4 engine has variable valve timing. variable valve lift and also incorporates the exhaust manifold into the cylinder head itself to help be really efficient at heating things that need to be heated primarily the catalytic converter, but it also gets really nice when the hot air hits the turbo nice and fast way. which helps it react faster, it is a direct fuel injection engine and has new injectors that squirt fuel at over 5,000 Psi (5,076 Psi), which is almost double that of the EVO 3 which used 2,900 PSI injectors , which also seems pretty high.

Having injectors so strong that they can squirt with so much pressure gives engineers a lot of control over the specific timing of combustion, which helps make combustion really good. 241 horsepower 273 pound-feet of torque. I'm not going to argue that overall this engine is strong. at all RPM levels you get good pull and remarkably linear power delivery considering it's turbocharged, it also puts out great exhaust tones, it feels smooth, it feels balanced, it feels refined, it's a fantastic engine, a minor drawback to the less for me is That this is equipped with the DSG dual clutch transmission, as I said, it is an 800 option as I already mentioned and it also adds 77 pounds of weight to the car, making it more expensive and heavier, and most of That weight goes in the front.

Axle all the bad things, a six speed manual transmission would definitely be more attractive even if it's not as fast or if you lose a little fuel efficiency, that's fine, but with that fast manual transmission run over, this is a very good transmission of double clutch. Seven speeds give you plenty of ratio range to work with and also give you launch control. I'll definitely show it to you in a moment. Another thing is an electronically controlled locking differential. This is a super sophisticated differential that is tied to stability. control and a host of other electronic controls in this car to precisely distribute torque across the front axle and spoiler alert, it does a very good job not only because, as I said, this is the base trim, but of fact it's standard across the entire GTI line and yes it's a little more fuel efficient and if the numbers are pretty good you get 25 miles per gallon in the city and 34 miles per gallon on Highway 28 combined which beats a bit to GTIs equipped with manual transmission because it is the same. except in the city, which is 24 miles per gallon, but that's all about electronic differential locks and big horsepower for a small hot hatch, right, fuel economy efficiency, very important, but not as fun as accelerating and, As I mentioned, we have launch control. of courseI had to test it out let me show you now okay it's time for everyone to do a throttle test so I'm just going to briefly go through the steps to put it in launch control while I'm parked on the side and then we'll go out and do it okay , go to the center console, go to the vehicle, then go to settings and then go to the breaks and then from the breaks, change the ESC from on to off, press OK on the system, that beep says hello.

The stability control has been disabled, that's fine with me, so go to the driving modes. I'm in sport driving mode, so I'll leave it there. I put the car in Drive, but I actually put it in Sport time to get it into position. Okay I'm going to a full stop foot press the brake hard as you press the throttle launch control program active around 4000 RPM takeoff brake oh man oh man wow god quick shift oh wow now the launch was actually a little soft , like it came off easily, but then once you got full force, once you got full acceleration, you had impressive acceleration, yeah, actually, a little bit smooth, right, a little bit atypical of what the launch control, so I had to go and try it without launch control.

I'll show you that, in fact, it was a mediocre launch, so I'm going to try it again without launch control, so everything is in sport mode, but now the stability control is fully active and I'm not going to break the torque or anything else. It's going to come to a stop and stab the accelerator, let's see what happens, okay, stop the accelerator completely, this is how we get some tire spin and this is how we move, this is probably more aggressive, it's definitely more aggressive , that was. a much faster launch out of the hole and then we still had the super quick shifts and everything else was pretty aggressive.

Wow, that was better than launch control and this thing is epically fast in a straight line. This little hot hatch, oh so good! Of course, this isn't called a hot hatch because it's fast in a straight line and I'm very curious to see how well this car handles before doing so, although let me tell you that for the Mark 8 Volkswagen installed a new aluminum front subframe. and increase the spring rates both front and rear five percent front fifteen percent rear compared to the Mark 7 GTI this has the potential to be good of course I had to try it let me show you right now okay everyone , it's time for a test drive I have the DSG in sport I have stability control in sport and I have drive mode in sport and I'm in a GTI this should be good, but this is a basic GTI, so we have tires for all seasons, we'll see how There's no shortage of power here man, any decent grip all things considered, and also a good balance of the chassis, that was very little understeer, oh yeah, this is a good feel from the car, it's easy to feel the limit on this and, man, it's fun, it's very A nice limited slip differential that works for us too.

This eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf GTI is fast. Oh man, it has great body control even over the little whoops on the road. Yes, I deliberately entered that corner too fast and it still handled very well. Wow, that's an impressive amount of grip from all-season tires fooling the limited-slip differential. It does a great job of reducing the power however you want. Distributes power very well. You have very little understeer, so the balance of the chassis is really fantastic. It does not have adaptive. dampers and yet it's a great tune up of this basic suspension so I don't feel the need for adaptive dampers.

I feel comfortable enough when driving regularly, but then I had great body control when we were really ripping through some corners, so this eighth generation Volkswagen Golf GTI really stays true to the hot hatch it created all those years ago. It's a lot of fun to drive. It's a fantastic job. It has what I think is a great balance of ride quality and handling stiffness. In my opinion, it still is. A Plenty compliant ride handles bumps and bumps on the road very well, yes it's stiffer than your average small compact sedan but no, not enough to punish you in any way and that's true for highways like this or on the interstate, so I had to test it there too, let me show you it's time to take a quick step on the interstate and see how this 8th generation Volkswagen Golf GTI drives and feels at speed.

We also have this set of road driving assistance systems called IQ. drive and we'll try it too and see how it goes well, we're up to speed on the interstate at 78 miles per hour with traffic at that vehicle speed, we're going at an engine speed of around 2100 RPM, very good. It's a little louder than some of the better ones out there, but the engine noise is very much in the background, it's nice and quiet, it's a distant hum, no problem. I hear a little more road noise than I expected. The wind noise is pretty much what I heard.

A premium level of vehicle was not expected here, but you know, at the high end for a conventional product like this, we are about to pass a tanker, we are reasonably isolated from that noise in the cabin, yes, not bad, We have adaptive cruise control that is working. Okay, we also have lane keeping assist, so I'm going to go ahead and take my hands off the wheel now as we approach a subtle curve on the interstate. Oh, it was a little late, it's a little late, so this is to keep you. avoid falling out of the lane, this is not a type of system that keeps you in the center of the lane, generally speaking, the touch screen on the center console is easy to use, it has many different options with the instrument cluster and settings for that , many You can choose to see different information, which I like, but the seats are a little uncomfortable for me because you have a fixed headrest back here and it tilts forward, so I feel like my neck sits just a touch forward, so that's a demerit.

Other than that, although this is a very comfortable car on the interstate and you also have the Hatchback for space so I think it would be a great road trip car in general, the GTI has been with us for over 40 years and when I say we I mean, here in the United States we are approaching 50 years of existence around the world and all that experience shows in this car. It's just a fun little machine to drive, it's less than 170 inches long and yet it's plenty comfortable for four adults here, the fact that you can get so much power, such an engaging ride, and so much utility all in one package. which starts at not much more than 30 thousand dollars, is truly impressive.

Driving enthusiasts fell in love with a hot hatch because of this car and for eight generations it has continued to perfect it and all that means is that this is the car for people who love to drive; still offers that compromise and yet it doesn't in a car that has a really broad focus that could have met the needs of a lot of different people in our car It's relatively efficient It's relatively spacious, it's relatively affordable and the features that Volkswagen offers in the base trim they are really good, heated seats, heated steering wheel, wireless charging for smartphones, all for just over 31 Grand, really, really good.

The only thing that would keep me from purchasing the S would be the seats with the lack of headrest adjustment. I may get used to it, but I'd also prefer to have a 12-way power seat so I can fit into it once in a while. I'm also past the special 40th anniversary edition, so younger ones may find it perfect as is. I'm Robin Warner, thanks for watching and if you're still watching, I would really appreciate it if you liked this video. It helps me a lot, okay, bye and let's go, oh man, great, great engine.