The D_TRB Garage: Golf GTI Clubsport 3rd Report
WHO NEEDS BACK SEATS? (AND WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?) The Golf GTI Clubsport Edition 40 meets its two seater sibling
Mary Berry (If you’re not familiar with her work, she’s cooking’s equivalent of Judi Dench. Sort of) recently got into a bain-marie over a pie without a pastry bottom. According to some, a pie without a pastry base ceases to be a pie. I’m with Mary on this. I’m happy for definitions to be a little looser. After all, the Cottage Pie is clearly a pie, yet has neither pastry bottom nor pastry top. The scandal.
Some people also seem to object strongly to the deletion of seats in a hot hatch, such as with the Clubsport S. As someone that likes the space in the back of a hatchback, but often leaves the seats folded flat for weeks at a time, the creation of what might be viewed as a van with windows doesn’t really bother me. But to others it seems abhorrent. Remove the back seats and it’s no longer a hot hatch to them, it’s a boxy sportscar. To these people, practicality means passengers and the S would need to be night and day better than my long term Clubsport Edition 40 to justify the absence of back seats. So is it?
I had an S for a week a while ago (we were filming a video with it - keep an eye on Tribe Nation) and initially things didn’t look very favourable for the hardcore hatch. For a start, the S certainly doesn’t up the aesthetic stakes. Same size wheels, same front bumper, same (understated but rather beautiful) rear spoiler. Park the two of them side by side and, to the casual observer, they’re about as inseparable as the two barrels on a shotgun. There are the decals on the side, but at the moment my car is so dirty that you can’t really tell what’s written low down in front of the rear wheels (sorry). If the car is stationary then you’ll obviously pick up the drilled discs on the S, but this is trickier if the car is moving…
The first few motorway miles spent inside in the S also felt remarkably similiar to the 7000 or so I’ve enjoyed in Edition 40. The was a lack of cruise control and the addition of a limited edition number in front of the gearstick, but other than that it was all business as usual. The ride, handling and engine all felt nigh on indistinguishable. Might as well just have the rear seats then?
Net. First service.
Well, no. Spend a bit more time behind the wheel, turn your back on the multi-lane stuff, steadily increase your pace, then increase it a bit more and then a bit further still and the S begins to put some clear water between its rear bumper and the Edition 40. The fundamental balance hasn’t changed, but the composure down a B-road is astoundingly good. The way you can throw it at bumpy bends and feel the wheels tracking the road beneath you is sublime. It just instills so much confidence with its totally faithful reactions that you commit to corners and really feel emboldened to push the limits. The steering is a smidgen heavier too and the VAQ limited-slip diff is also a bit more aggressive in the way it cleverly drags you out of a corner (no doubt helped by the increased ability of the suspension to keep the front wheels in contact with the tarmac).
Then there is the engine. The spec sheet says that with 306bhp and 280lb ft the S is only 20bhp and 22lb ft stronger than the Edition 40, but it feels more than that. It charges through the revs from 5000rpm upwards, really encouraging you to squeeze every last bit before going for the next gear. A big part of that encouragement is the noise the S makes, which is considerably more rowdy than the Ed40. There aren’t many really good sounding four-pots around at the moment, but the Clubsport S is certainly easy on the ear, with a character that is like a less lumpy Subaru flat-four.
Both my long term car and the S have DCC (Dynamic Chassis Control), which allows you to choose your suspension setting independently of other switchable parameters like steering, diff and throttle. In the Edition 40, my preferred set up is to leave everything in Sport but knock the DCC all the way back to Comfort. The extra movement in the suspension seems to work well with British B-roads and also gives the GTI more adjustability as you can work the weight transfers a little more. The Clubsport S has settings that go beyond Sport to Race and once again I found myself setting everything to this most aggressive level, while leaving the suspension a little more relaxed. I tried it in Comfort initially, but settled on Normal as I felt the extra pace the car allows you to carry means the more tightly controlled damper setting feels more in tune with the rest of the car (and there’s actually no appreciable decline in comfort).
The Clubsport S is an addictively fast car and on the road you would struggle to find something that was much quicker from A to B. It really is that good. If I was offered the keys to either (and this is going on the basis that the list price of both cars, once specced up is remarkably close - I accept that you can only buy an S second-hand now and the going rate seems to be about £40k or £10k more than a similarly second-hand Edition 40, but for the sake of argument…!) I would take the S. The increased and improved noise is a big enough reason for me to pick it, but jumping back into the Edition 40 I found I did miss the extra bit of bite in the Race setting for the VAQ diff too. And the smidge of extra steering weight. And the extra polish to the damping. Marginal gains, but they do add up.
So the S justifies its lack of back seats. However… if the whole reason you need a hatchback is because it will seat five not two, then the good news is that the Clubsport Edition 40 is still utterly wonderful. In fact if I’d approached this the other way around and had stepped from a long term S into an Ed40 I think I would probably be writing about how impressively close the car with three back seats gets to the stripped out ‘Ring record holder.
To read the first report on the D_TRB long term GTI Clubsport Edition 40, click here: drivetribe.com/p/dj4jyg9NQOW_32tvwGHhIA?iid=UfX6gicNTp6H_jdg8NRUHw
And to read the second report, click here: drivetribe.com/p/ft0mShODRHCyuEH1o12IWw?iid=aRWZLA8HTv2nNHnj4UXFIA
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Comments (2)
I preferred my GTI Performance to the Golf R overall so would love to have a go in either one of those.
Might seem a strange question, but can you retro fit a rear seat into an S (and be able to remove for resale)? That seems like the best compromise/ investment