- Hot hatches were the future
until the big, bubbly, dummy,
little SUV's came in
with their RSQ5's and
Porsche Cayenne Turbo's,
and bigger breaks than my entire body.
And now car enthusiasts over the age of 28 are
skipping the wagon game
which is (beep).
And they're just not even looking at the hot hatch game
and they're giving all their money to
bubbly trucks with no bed,
and no towing capacity.
And it's sad, all right?
Get yourself a truck.
Get yourself some rust in the wheel liners
and turn into an adult in America, okay?
Let's take it back to a time
when hot hatches were the only
other major option besides a wagon when you were an adult.
A simpler time.
A time where Pub-G was the reigning
battle royale game, okay?
A time where Alex had cars that weren't broke.
Psych.
They've always been broke.
I'm Alex. ALEX.FI on Instagram,
and today we're going to be talking about
one of the most iconic
hot hatches in the world.
Okay? I could do it in the Clarkson voice,
but my accents are really bad.
A car that was the fundamental player
of even creating a hot hatch category
when it didn't really even exist.
A car that people always follow up with,
"Like, a Nissan GTR?" Like that.
A car that will nearly always break your neck
when you're an enthusiast because, dammit,
fender rust hasn't taken them all yet
and that one looks pretty darn good from ten feet away.
Ladies and gentleman, we're going to be talking about
you wanting to own a Volkswagen R32.
(powerful music)
And, if you're looking for after-market wheels,
tires, or suspension
be sure to hit us up over at fitmentindustries.com
Where we literally have everything your little heart
could possibly want.
We have a new wheel wall.
It's pretty exciting.
They're not standing six feet apart,
but that's okay,
'cause they're cold.
Just kidding. Stay safe.
And, if you haven't subscribed yet,
be sure to do so,
It'd be, mean a lot.
I mean, it'd be cool.
You don't have to.
And, of course, if you guys didn't know
we have a white shirt...
Usually, I'm wearing black shirts.
I got a white shirt, 'cause we have a
Rotiform giveaway going on right now.
Check the description link below.
Below all the other stuff you're gonna see.
If you want to get entered in to win.
It's pretty awesome. Okay?
And thank you guys for your support.
I remember the days of 20 views and 16 subscribers,
and to see all this cool comments now makes me very happy.
I watched one of my first videos and it made me
really nervous and scared
because I still have no facial hair
and I was even more uncomfortable.
The Volkswagen R32 has an insane history.
In 2002, the R32
was first birthed into the European market.
It was the worlds first production car
with a dual-clutch gear box.
It was something that was pretty neat
and also controversial at the time.
But, they didn't really expect it to be as big as it was.
It was massively successful for Volkswagen
considering the price and what it was offering.
Like, it was yuge, one might say.
Volkswagen then decided to sell the car
in the United States and Australia.
Wanted to use the car and sell the car
in the United states and Australian market
in the 2004 model.
Starting off as an ordinary Volkswagen Golf,
Volkswagen decked the R32 out
with everything it could possibly imagine.
Every conceivable and possible option that VW
had in it's arsenal.
It also featured the fantastic and lovely,
beautiful, the sweet and sassy,
(muah)
the one motor that should never go away:
The VR-6 engine.
This bad boy had 240 horses
and a decent rev range.
But that, paired with the hauled extraction,
four-wheel drive, the six-speed manual transmission,
independent rear suspension, automatic climate control,
Konig C 18 inch O.Z.'s.
All right?
Aristo wheels, electronic stability control,
and the fact that they took the DSG out
and put a manual in for those models
was a recipe
for success, all right.
It also has bigger breaks,
it had blue paint
which is the most iconic, most common color.
You can also have red, silver, and one other one
I think it's yellow.
No, it's not yellow.
Bigger breaks, blue paint,
you can also get three other colors,
but the blue paint's the most common,
sun roof, HID's and a more full-size exterior body.
All right, you can get these in other cool colors
but blue, blue is the one that
I'll remember the most
'cause it's such a great color.
The car shared plenty of clothes
from it's more refined brother, the Audi TT.
Paired with just 5000 units, the demand for this car
ended up clearing all available inventory on launch.
They anticipated it to be a two year sale forecast.
It ended up selling in about half that time.
The mechanical set up put the car in a pretty decent
speed bracket, too.
Mid 6's for 0 to 60, 14 second quarter mile,
it can handle itself around the track fairly well.
The real key piece of this car
came from the fact that it had a very short wheel base,
all wheel drive system, and a manual transmission.
It's why people loved it 'cause it kept them so connected
to the ground.
The car's driving behavior was so different.
The Haldex sent the power to the rear wheels
when the front's lost traction.
Not all the time, and that's what gave it a very
interesting driving experience that people
actually enjoyed quite a bit.
With the shorter wheel base,
this made the car feel like Elmer's Glue around the corners.
And even though it wasn't all that quick,
it felt quick.
The initial R32 set the precedence of just
how high the bar was set with that specific car,
that model, and it started the hot hatch game.
People didn't have to worry about price competition
because the Volkswagen R32 was the only one really
with a major price competition.
And people bought the (beep) out of it.
In 2005, R32 came back with a bit more chrome,
softer lines, and the same super hot fire
center mounted exhaust.
Best thing about that car.
This time, though, it came without
the manual transmission
which makes me kind of sad.
It makes me sad not because
I don't like automatics,
it makes me kind of sad because I know a lot of people
want a manual.
So, when it was only offered in that DSG,
it kind of turned a lot of people away.
And although the badge was a statement,
the next generation didn't really carry
the same weight of the first one.
It was also a higher price
and the weight started to shift people away
from this as a viable hot hatch option
and, it started to look at some of the competition
and actually give them a leg up
in certain different categories.
But it still kept up to the competition
of the STI and the EVO in terms of some basic performance.
That, and it still had the VR6 motor
which everyone absolutely loved.
Take away the DSG conversion and it was an improvement
but in the heart of hot hatches becoming
ever so popular,
the competition got even more "Game of Thrones" like
and Volkswagen was no longer on the top of the game,
playing by himself with NPC characters.
There's a couple real players in this game now
and they were doing pretty well
at taking a couple bites out of (beep)
of the Volkswagen R32.
Probably shouldn't say that.
Just bleep that whole thing out.
Now, the title is called "So you want an R32"
but in 2010 they introduced the Golf R.
They couldn't call it the R-20, 2 liter turbo,
because that's a downgrade.
But, I would say that it comes with a similar lineage
to the R32.
So boy, oh boy, are we gonna talk about it
just for a couple two, three seconds.
The Golf R of 2010 was redesigned
and probably one of the best looking ones
out of the bunch.
Besides the first one.
Just gonna say it, okay.
Instead of the iconic VR6, though,
it came with GTI's FSI 2 liter, turbo charged,
4 cylinder that was all ramped up to kingdom come, baby.
Yup.
The VR6's
died.
Well, yeah. I mean,
it's kind of sad, but the new motor was pretty good, too.
The R's engine was a reinforced block, piston's, rod's,
bigger turbo and 256 horsepower fun,
and it came back with a manual transmission.
The car dated beautifully, all right,
for it being a 10 year old car.
And Volkswagen really had a great way with these cars
and putting all the right design cues in the right place.
The refined interior, sharper exterior and
overall structure resulted in the car
doing fairly terrible.
Wait, what?
They gave people like you and people like me
a dang stick in the middle to do the thing.
But, Volkswagen started to lose out in competition space
even more.
It was actually one of the worst selling cars of 2013
which made it hard for Volkswagen to decide on whether
the R name plate should even continue or not.
Competition was getting fierce and prices were coming down.
And especially as you start to hear of domestic companies
starting to come in with their hot hatches
which pretty much didn't even come with four wheels
unless you up-sold it,
the pricing on those cars were very, very cheap.
But they did.
They came out with another R in the next generation
because (beep) it, why not?
The most recent R Golf is 296 horsepower,
DSG or manual, sharp as heck,
fast as a double sprint
and looks dang good, all right.
The aftermarket potential on this car is huge
and it has been doing insanely hot, healthy,
looking good, very good in the market.
Okay, very good. I feel like I sound a little bit like-
I'm not even gonna talk about it.
And, when you look at a perform and not a hatch,
this generation actually did very well.
But we're not here-
we're not here to talk about the history of these cars.
You want some of that go read a book or something.
I don't know.
People, I think-
Do people actually spend time reading
like, casually?
We're here to talk about you wanting to own
a Volkswagen R32.
Sorry Golf R, another time, another video.
Well, set down your favorite blue nail polish
and grab your junk yard fender,
and let's jump in to what it's like to actually own
one of these bad boy iconic cars.
If you're gonna own a Volkswagen R32,
there's two very big things
you're gonna want to be aware of
right out of the get go.
All right, number one.
This is really important, okay?
You made a great choice
and I'm proud of you.
Smile and be happy that you snagged a properly fun car.
Because there's not enough people
that just try to keep these cars alive
and if you're one of them,
I'm proud of you.
I am.
Okay?
Number two, you need to immediately figure out
where it's rusting and stop it.
The reason that these cars get a bunch of crayon jokes
is because it's the smell of the underside
of when they tried to get that rust proofed
but all that ended up doing was smelling like a crayola
or kindergarten center and it just
didn't work, all right.
Fix the rust.
Volkswagen R32's have some of the best and worst
sauce you can possibly imagine in a car.
Great things like motor, styling, exhaust,
and manual transmission in the first generation
of that model
are some of the best reasons to pick one up
and the pricing isn't that bad.
But there are also some pretty terrible things that
are associated along with that car, okay.
The crayon jokes, the fender rust,
and the fact that they are getting considerably more
difficult to find and keep alive.
That, and they do have a tendency to start falling apart
a little bit.
At the end of the day they're still a Volkswagen.
So, it's not like they're built to stay alive forever.
The one with the DSG still isn't terrible by any means,
but most...
just stick to the first generation
when it comes to picking up an R32.
That doesn't mean you can't pick it up
a second generation with the DSG
but it just doesn't have as much support.
The paint scheme's on these cars are also awesome.
I mean, they're just superb.
Coming from a modification point of view,
you have everything you need for success as well.
Because it's a Volkswagen.
You can throw some Rotiforms on there,
you can throw some Nitto's tires on there,
some coils from pretty much any brand known to man:
ST, KW, BC, Fortunado, Tame, Silvers, or anything like that
and you'll pretty much be set.
Not only that, but you also have the all-wheel drive system
so you can drive these around almost all year round
which is probably why most of them
do have a little bit of rust attached.
Now, not only that you should-
but one thing to remember is just because you can
doesn't mean that you always should.
Because they don't survive very long
especially when you're looking at inclement weather.
But you still can if you want to,
you just got to keep a eye on the wheel wells,
a lot of times the fender liners,
the strut towers and some other places
where it's all just can creep up into.
Pricing on these cars have appreciated a little bit, too.
But you can still find them in an okay deal
if you look hard enough.
Thigh-check.
You get a hatch so your wife can be proud of you
for buying something practical.
Your friends will be proud of you
for buying a car that has a motor of the gods, okay.
And you will be proud of you
for making a strong purchase.
And Fitment Industries will be proud of you
because you kept one of the coolest cars alive.
Even if it's only for a few more years
until you jump into an ST or an RS
and then finally get a bubbly SUV
because
that's what...
I just...
Just gets me angry, all right.
But, what do you think about the Volkswagen R32?
Let us know, and of course let us know
what you'd like us to talk about next.
If you're looking for aftermarket wheels,
tires, or suspension,
be sure to hit us up over at fitmentindustries.com
for your newly acquired Volkswagen R32 or otherwise.
By the way, the jokes on the skyline thing,
they always happen. It's just how it goes.
Just let it go, don't get mad and just move on, all right.
We love you.
Be safe, stay safe.
I'm Alex from Fitment Industries,
we will see you later.
Peace.