Following the unveiling of the new Golf GTI, the more powerful Golf R was revealed in November last year, with 320 hp and 420 Nm. The previous generation Mk7.5 Golf R we reviewed in early 2019 only made 290 hp and 380 Nm.
However, according to a report by CarAdvice, the publication speculated that there could be a more powerful variant above the Golf R, dubbed the Golf R “Plus”. The rumour sparked from a section of the Golf’s Owners Manual in the UK.
The Technical Data section in the Owner’s Manual pointed out two different output figures for the Golf R – 235 kW (320 hp) and 245 kW (333 hp). The former figure was officially announced during the global unveiling.
The idea of a more powerful Golf R “Plus” may sound appealing and also relevant to the times (seeing as car companies are selling thousands of variants of one model just to “plug the gaps” in the market) but we wouldn’t jump the gun so soon.
Our guess is that it could be one of those “Toyota Supra situations” – where one country publishes a certain horsepower figure, but another country discovers a different (likely higher) figure.
In case you’ve not watched, even we went to the extent of putting the Supra on the dyno and it did return higher figures than what was published. In case you haven’t learnt, the phenomenon of different performance figures is largely due to emission regulations.
Some countries stricter regulations, limiting output to just 320 hp for example, but some countries like Malaysia are less strict, allowing for an engine tune that produces more power. Hence the 333 hp but at this extremely early stage, it’s anyone’s guess.
Should the figures be true though, the Golf R would be making more power than the Civic Type R (310 hp / 400 Nm), the Megane R.S. (280 hp / 390 Nm), the i30N (279 hp / 353 Nm) and is inferior only to the new A45 S 4MATIC+ in Malaysia, with 427 hp and 500 Nm.
Let’s hope it wouldn’t be priced as high as Mercedes-AMG’s hot hatch! Or even in the same ballpark.
