VW Golf GTI TCR review: £85k touring car driven

By topgear, 14 February 2019
VW Golf GTI TCR

That’s an exciting looking Golf.
This is the Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR. Not the road-going hot hatch, but its influence, a TCR-spec touring car that’s eligible to compete in tin-top racing series around the world.

In short, TCR has transformed the way touring car competitions operate, simplifying the regulations to keep the cars cheap and accessible. All things being relative, of course; this GTI TCR starts at €95,000 (circa RM435,800). A lot for a Golf, but not much for a racecar.

So cheap’s sorted. What about accessible?
It’s very much Golf beneath the skin. TCR regulations keep cars close to those you buy on the road, with a 2,000cc cap on engine size. So this has a 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo like any other mk7 Golf GTI, only tuned up to nearly 350bhp, over 100bhp more than the cheapest GTI on sale. It’s still front-wheel drive and uses the same locking-diff technology to manage all that power through only the foremost axle.

Performance is improved upon the TCR road car – 0-100kph is half a second down, at 5.2secs – and at 1,285kg it also weighs over 100kg less, which probably doesn’t seem like much when you consider the interior’s stripped out and there’s none of the luxury. But there’s more of the stuff that matters in motorsport; more telemetry, more roll cage and considerably more bodywork. Just look at those arches!

Keeping accessibility as a priority, you also have two choices of gearbox. Cheapest, at that €95k entry point, is a TCR with a DSG paddleshifter just like you get in road-going VWs. Pay €115k (RM527,600) and you’ll upgrade to a proper six-speed sequential gearbox, one requiring not only more talent, but more maintenance too. The DSG can last up to 14,000 miles (22,530km) without replacement, whereas the sequential needs a complete overhaul every 2,000-4,000 miles (3,218-6,437km).

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Should I care?
Well, TCR cars are eligible for short circuit races and endurance events, like the Nürburgring 24 Hours, and the DSG is advisable if you’re targeting the latter. Which might help give it credibility if you’re worried choosing a racecar that can genuinely be left in auto mode if you wish (some drivers do, too) counts as some sort of ‘chickening out’.

It’s the DSG car we’ve driven here, and boy does that accessibility play out when you actually experience the GTI TCR. It’s easy to feel the weight of intimidation in a pit garage, as a HANS device is slotted around your neck and a helmet clamped onto your head before you splay your legs clumsily over the roll cage, hoping you don’t look as out of your depth as you desperately feel.

Then you spot the same gear lever as a Golf diesel, snick it down into D, and pull away with more noise and ferocity but no less difficulty than any other two-pedalled VW on sale. Of course, there are signs this is a serious racer – the button-resplendent suede steering wheel, the heavy, unassisted brake pedal, a low-slung driving position that pops your eye level in the bottom third of the windscreen (if you’re a shorty like me, anyway) – but you’re not fighting a set of controls that need a racing licence to comprehend. It’s genuinely as easy to drive as any other GTI.

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Does that mean it’s not quick?
While patently not a slow car, it’s not outrageously, head-swimmingly fast, so your entry speeds into corners are never going to be the kind to get you into serious trouble. It’s still a big step on from even a Golf R road car, but it doesn’t live on some kind of otherworldly plain that needs serious gumption to access.

Which is the whole car to a tee, really. I assume the sequential gearbox adds the extra layer of depth that’ll be necessary to test experienced racers (as would adjusting the set-up to be a wee bit livelier); calling me a ‘novice’ would be over complimentary and yet I felt comfortable in this DSG car, struggling to think of anything sub-£100k that would deliver quite as much satisfaction with so little jeopardy.

Besides other TCR cars, of course. The regulations are reasonably tight, particularly those regarding buying and servicing costs, so any of the vast array of TCR-regulation racers on sale doubtless deliver a similar balance of awe and approachability – a Honda Civic Type R, Hyundai i30N, Peugeot 308 GTI, and countless others all follow the same recipe and compete in the same championships. Even within the VW Group, there are minor rivalries thanks to TCR Audi RS3s and Cupra Leons. A few laps of Portimao on my own in this Golf was big fun… racing amongst a grid of these things must be spectacular.