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Hi and welcome back to another episode.
I'm Mike Quincey.
I'm Jake Fisher.
And I'm Alex Knizek.
So the car that we are going to highlight today
is one that I think all three of us
are definitely looking forward to telling you,
our faithful audience, about, and that
is the 2022 Volkswagen GTI.
This is the Mark 8 version.
The first US model debuted in 1983 back
when it was called a Rabbit.
I bet some people might not know that it was the Rabbit.
Yes.
Now it's the Golf.
How did they go from Rabbit to Golf?
I don't know, it doesn't matter.
Anyway, so the new model is lower and longer
than its predecessor.
It still keeps the hatchback body style this time.
It's only four doors.
They're not doing the two-door model anymore.
Handling has always been a real trademark of the GTI
and the new model gets an electronically controlled
torque steering limited slip differential.
It offers adaptive damping system.
The two liter turbocharged four cylinder engine puts out
241 horsepower at 273 pounds feet of torque.
The original made 90 whole horsepower.
So we're definitely having an upgrade there.
Good news for the enthusiasts out there,
and I know I'm sharing company right now with two of them,
is you can still get a six-speed manual transmission, yay, save
the manuals, but you can also get
an optional seven-speed dual clutch automatic,
also referred to as a DSG.
Interior gets a big 10-inch infotainment screen,
looks like an extension of the instrument panel,
and we're going to discuss that in just a second.
Oh gosh.
Oh yeah.
Important safety features are standard:
forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking,
lane keeping assist, blind spot.
New model is built in Wolfsburg, Germany.
Starts at $29,545 for the manual transmission.
Opting for the DSG pumps the price up to $30,345.
We rented a top-shelf Autobahn model
from Volkswagen, which includes lots of nice bits.
19-inch wheels, head up display, fancy leather seats,
12-way power driver seats.
These are our first impressions.
So Alex, you're good with a clutch
so I'm going to throw it to you first.
What, I'm not good with a clutch?
Just to add on to your very nicely done intro there,
Mike, something interesting with this car is that this is now,
the GTI and the Golf R that are both coming
out at the same time, are now the only way
to get a Golf in the US.
So you actually can't buy a regular Golf anymore,
which I think is speaking to just the way the car market is
going.
The only way to get this little hatchback
is in the high performance version.
So you used to be able to get run of the mill Golf
and that's just not the case anymore.
No, that's a great point.
I'm glad you brought that up.
Yeah.
Well, Volkswagen is very quickly turning
into the SUV company and three-row SUVs and all those.
But at least they're keeping the GTI for us.
Right, right, and very happy about it.
So aside from the controls that you alluded to,
which we'll get to later, I was super impressed with this car
and I just love driving it.
And I think the GTI has always been
that kind of Jack of all trades car
and this just takes it even further.
It's super enjoyable and fun to drive, great handling when
you want it to be, but then it can also kind of settle
into the background when you just
want to drive in a relaxed fashion or comfortably
or whatever it is.
So I just love that about it.
And driving on the street the handling seemed pretty good.
You know, I obviously really, really liked
the six speed and the engine was pretty great,
but then when I got it out onto our track and did
a couple of laps, that's where I was really blown away.
Just the handling limits, especially for a front wheel
drive car, were just way higher than what I expected.
The engine is really strong and responsive.
In that limited slip differential
that you mentioned, Mike, they have
claims of eliminating understeer,
which is a problem with high powered front wheel drive cars.
I wouldn't necessarily use the word eliminates,
but if you're trying to put in a clean lap around the track
it does a great job of putting power down, feeling neutral,
being balanced, all those things.
If you really try to explore the limit too far,
you can feel where that front wheel drive push comes in,
but if you're trying to drive it well and fast
it's pretty amazing.
So I was I was very impressed.
Wow, that's pretty much of a ringing endorsement
and I'm wondering can Jake possibly top this?
Well I mean, look, this car kind of holds a special place for me
because when I was in high school
I drove around on 1980 Rabbit, not a GTI,
but I slowly put GTI parts on it.
It kind of turned into a GTI sort of.
It was a GTI wannabe.
It was a GTI wannabe, exactly.
Yes, but I mean, there's so much similarities.
You know, I mean it was just a really fun car
to drive back then, it's a really fun car to drive now.
It's a somewhat practical car today and it was back then.
And it just shows that you could have a really fun time driving
in a little hatchback, front wheel drive hatchback.
It doesn't have to be some swoopy sports car,
it doesn't have to have something
that's two seats only, and you could have just as much fun.
And this is a extremely fun car to drive.
I mean, the shifter, the steering, the handling.
There is one thing that you've alluded to, one thing,
and it's the infotainment and the electronics.
And I'm going to throw back to you, Mr. Quincey.
That's what I'm giving the new radio.
I mean, come on.
And here's the thing, it's that Volkswagen
has been doing so well when it comes
to the infotainment systems, I mean
they're simple and just straightforward, and now--
I mean, it's very similar to what
we see in the ID.4, the electric vehicle.
It's like, I don't know, it reminds
me of Cadillac CUE version 1.
It's like there's sliders and there are capacitive controls
on the steering wheel and adjusting the temperature
has kind of got--
What have they done?
Why have they done this?
Because you have got an incredible car to drive.
I want to do driving and then they've
got this distracto-tainment system that
is trying to get my eyes off the road
to try to figure out how to adjust the CD
or whatever it is.
And sometimes it gets in your way,
too, because you're turning the wheel
and suddenly, oh, I brushed my finger on the wrong spot
on the wheel and now I've changed my radio station
and I got to get back to it.
So it just, it's so close.
It's such a great car, such a great chassis,
such a great driving vehicle.
Why couldn't they've just kept it simple like it was?
Distracto-infotainment.
I think you should patent that.
That's a good one.
I think they have.
Yeah, no.
What also Jake is referring to is the first time that I ever
was on a Consumer Reports Talking Cars podcast,
we talked about guess the previous or even
before that generation GTI and it really did nothing for me.
It didn't wow me like this one did.
I did give it a thumbs down.
I think the GTI is thumbs down.
It's not that big a deal.
I did say replace the letters GTI with MEH,
which was oh it's trendy to just go meh,
because that's what my kids were doing.
I guess no one says that anymore,
but, yeah so for the controls, replace GTI for OMG.
Like how could you have messed this up so badly?
And Jake, you touched on this.
I mean, Volkswagen has been making cars for, well listen,
even before I was born they were making cars.
You would think that this is something they could really
do well is make simple controls because they have
a long history of doing that.
We've criticize Volkswagens for various things over the years
here at Consumer Reports, but the controls were usually
not one of that criteria.
They have been doing really well there.
You know what it reminds me of, and I hate to say this?
It reminds me of when BMW came out with iDrive, right?
And for the longest time BMW was the ultimate driving machine.
And they were.
They were incredible driving vehicles.
And then they were like, we're going to be the ultimate gadget
machines.
And you look at what had happened to BMW,
they've taken their eye off the ball in terms
of steering feel and that engagement
and really put it into all these advanced electronics.
And look, I mean it's been somewhat successful for them.
Right?
I mean, people are buying now BMW SUVs with all the latest
gadgets, but for someone who is a car enthusiast, who
really loved those old BMW 3 Series
or even go back to the 2002, a little bit of that's gone
and now they're just adding on these electronics.
I feel a little bit of that.
I mean, look, don't get me wrong.
The GTI has not given up anything
in terms of drivability and this thing is great,
but you know I see the direction changing.
And certainly for Volkswagen they've changed the directions.
It's really more of an SUV company
than it is a sporty, European sedan and hatchback company.
I love your example of the BMW because the 7 Series back
in the early 2000s, I believe, was the first model where
the iDrive debuted.
And we did our testing, we did our evaluations,
and this was BMW's top of the line model at the time,
and that car sat.
Nobody wanted to drive it after we were done testing it
because it was such a pain to do simple things like changing
the radio station and stuff like that.
I thought well, that's bad.
I mean, some car company's top of the line car?
We should be fighting each other to get into it.
And we didn't.
It was like, OK, yeah we're done with that,
we're going to move on to something else.
But I do share you guy's--
I'm going to repeat everything you said.
I love driving this car.
I had the awesome opportunity to drive,
to do the B roll that we're using on this podcast right
now, so I got to thrash it around the track.
It puts the power down really well, the shift action is good,
the steering feedback is awesome.
I love this car.
It's not an STI, like some people are like, oh,
that's like the standard.
But what's funny is I've driven just about every generation GTI
and I remember an '83 GTI and '84 GTI
that I drove way back when and the ride
was bone crushingly hard.
You felt every pebble and even back then I thought,
that's a little extreme.
So to see how the GTI's ride has evolved to a really good,
everyday, usable car is a big credit
to Volkswagen. I mean clearly the GTI has
made massive strides over almost 40 years
in terms of performance.
It's really sad that the controls
took so many steps backwards.
I will be excited to drive the car that we plan on purchasing
for the test program because this top spec
that we rented gets these adaptive dampers on it
and it has all this trick tech going on
to make the car at least handle better.
All the GTIs are going to come with this limited slip
differential, but it has these adaptive dampers
and a couple other things to help it feel more balanced.
So I will be interested to see how well ours rides or maybe
how well it doesn't ride compared to this one,
because you could go in there and adjust
the firmness of the dampers and it's not
a huge drastic difference between the softest setting
and the hardest, but it's a noticeable difference.
So it kind of gives it more of that adaptability, I
think, to different situations.
So it'll be fun to check out what ours is like.
And we are in the process of trying to buy one
and as we get our test model and start putting on miles,
we'll do a first drive and we'll do our complete road test
evaluations like we always do.
Really looking forward to getting this car and exactly
what you mentioned, Alex, let's see
how it's different than this the Autobahn model
that we rented for Volkswagen.
We have one question for today's podcast
and we'd love your questions, video, text questions.
Keep them coming.
talkingcars@icloud.com.
That's talkingcars@icloud.com.
The question we've got today is from Chris
from Concord, Massachusetts and Chris writes,
"Does Consumer Reports consider paddle shifters
a potential safety hazard?
Manufacturers now include paddles
on the underside of steering wheels in many models.
This placement can cause unsuspecting motorists
to change gears accidentally, startling
and distracting the driver.
Drivers should have the ability to disable this feature.
Very few folks are looking to shift gears manually.
What say you?"
Good question.
Alex?
Tossing it to you.
Thanks, Chris.
And somewhat local.
That's pretty cool to get a quick question like that.
So you know, first and foremost, we don't really
have any data that says that these shifters are a safety
concern.
We usability test all the vehicles
that come through our program and it's never
been brought up or discovered that it's a safety concern.
I can see the argument that if you
don't know what it does and you activate it
or press one of these buttons that it could be a distraction,
but I would also argue that could
be the case for any control that you activate in the car
that you're not familiar with or causes
something that is unexpected.
So yeah, we don't really see that as an issue
and it starts to make more sense.
The reason they're there is as we
move towards these different electronic shifters,
these rotary shifters, push buttons,
and also they're attached to transmissions
that have maybe 10 gears, starts to make sense
to use buttons to select gears individually
rather than a traditional shifter that
has like a PRND and 1, 2, 3 or whatever there on the center
console.
So that's kind of what's driving that change.
They're less for shifting yourself
as you would in a manual car or aggressive driving or anything
like that.
It's just mainly there to allow you
to take advantage, really, of engine braking down hills.
So if you're coasting down a really steep hill, which
we have tons of around here, it is advantageous
and some people prefer to try to use engine braking
to take some pressure off the brakes, that sort of thing.
Then one last thing to add is the car
is never going to allow you to shift into a gear that
is going to damage the car or overrev the engine
or anything like that.
So yes, if you grab it unknowingly,
it may raise engine RPM, but it's never
going to allow you to put it in first gear,
for example, when you're going 60 miles an hour
and cause any damage or anything dangerous in that regard.
So yes, I mean, I could see being
able to disable these as an option for people
who really prefer to do that.
But again, it's not a safety issue
that we are seeing anyway.
And I'm glad you brought up the topic of engine braking
and I was going to ask Jake, do you ever
find yourself using these paddle shifters just kind of for fun?
Or are you kind of like me, unless you're going down
a hill you kind of ignore them?
I ignore those.
I mean, if I'm driving a stick shift
I absolutely use engine braking, but I mean,
the truth is in everyday driving you're not
going to be heating up your brakes
that much that you could drive just more smoothly
just drive using your brakes.
So I mean the truth is that in some ways,
I mean Alex is right, if you want to go and do
that, it gives you a way to keep your hands on the steering
wheel as opposed to taking your hands off the steering wheel.
So in a way, it's actually safer to use those and actually
take your hands off the wheel.
But Alex is exactly right.
Anything that you're inadvertently operating,
and there's more and more stuff now on the steering wheel,
I mean now we've got like it's a full typewriter that's
on the keyboard on your steering wheel.
Wow, I really sound old, huh?
But I mean, the issue is all the capacitive controls.
I mean, it's so easy as you're steering to inadvertently do
something that distracts you.
Generally these things are kind of a little further away
and I think if you hit it once you're like,
OK, I'm not going to do that again
and I figured it out how to put it back in the drive.
But we haven't had many people come to us
and say, hey, what are these for?
Why is this happening?
So thanks for that answer, Alex, and that's
going to do it for this episode of two old guys
and Alex talking about cars.
As always, check the show notes for more information
on the vehicles and topics that we discussed.
Just a reminder, keep those questions coming in
at talkingcars@icloud.com.
Thanks so much for tuning in and we'll see you next week.
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