With around 240bhp on tap, this is the most powerful Golf that Volkswagen has ever put into production. The power comes from a 3.2-litre version of the familiar 2.8 V6 engine, and although that size is new to the Golf, the same unit (give or take a bit of mild tweaking) also appears in the Beetle RSi, the Phaeton and the Touareg off-roader.In order to deal with all that grunt, the R32 gets 4Motion four-wheel drive, lowered suspension (it rides 10mm nearer the ground than a standard V6), ESP and an uprated steering rack which actually comes from the Audi TT. Volkswagen isn't making a big feature of that last bit, though it makes sense as the rack is in the VW Group parts bin and comes from a car which uses the Golf platform.There's plenty of exterior evidence that this is no ordinary Golf, including new bumpers and sills, chrome tailpipes and 18" alloy wheels with bright blue brake calipers showing through.As you might expect, the R32 is very quick, even if it doesn't have quite the mid-range kick of the turbocharged petrol and diesel cars in the same range. But straight-line performance isn't everything, and the R32 has a lot of competition, both from within the Group and from rival manufacturers. So does it shape up?No, it doesn't. You can see the problem as soon as you open the bonnet to admire the engine. It's a purposeful-looking unit, but it's also very big and very heavy. And practically all of it is ahead of the front axle (there being no room to mount it any further back). This means that all that weight is hauling down on the front suspension and in effect trying to lift the rear wheels off the ground.It's as if someone had given the Volkswagen engineers an almost insoluble problem and said, "Right, guys, let's see you get out of that one." They've done what they could - the mind boggles as to how the car would react to having nearly 240bhp going through the front wheels, for instance - but really, there was never any way this was going to work.With so much mass pushing down on the front tyres, traction is hardly a problem, and I could imagine the R32 being quite an effective amateur drag racer, in the same way that the MG Maestro Turbo rather surprisingly turned out to be (its engine being mounted well forward too). But the Maestro wasn't exactly the world's best-handling hot hatch, and the R32 isn't either.It doesn't like cornering, it's a bit squirmy under heavy braking, and if you drive into a dip in the road you can feel that enormous engine plunging downwards and then leaping back up again, while the suspension tries its damndest to keep everything under control.And you need to be pretty clever with the pedal on the right. One thing I didn't mention in the list of things that distinguishes the R32 from other Golfs is an extra-responsive throttle. Too responsive, frankly. The slightest touch on the pedal makes the engine react sharply, and if you happen to do this at the wrong point in a corner the front end starts to career off line.The R32's case isn't helped by a couple of annoying VW Group habits. First, the low-profile tyres do nothing to suppress small, sharp bumps in the road, making the ride quite tiresome. And the gearbox has six ratios in it, which is at least one too many when combined with an engine that gives a whopping 236lb/ft of torque between 2800 and 3200rpm. It may be a useful marketing tool to be able to say that a car has six gears, but from a technical point of view I prefer Ford's decision to offer just five in the Focus RS (a car which might easily be considered a rival to the R32).In normal driving, when you're not trying to go quickly, the obvious rev range for normal use is between, say, 2000 and 3000rpm. That turns out to be rather unfortunate, because the Golf is very noisy indeed between 1800 and 2500. Other people have made this criticism, and it has led to an interesting piece of spin on the part of the Volkswagen people. "Tch, I don't know," it goes, "we make other cars sound refined and people say they're too quiet, then we make this one and people say it's too loud. You just can't please some folk."Nice try. But engine noise isn't the problem. Somewhere in the body structure there is a resonance which chimes in at the speeds mentioned above, and unless you get the engine spinning more quickly (either by going faster or by changing down a gear or two) it soon becomes intensely annoying. I realise that this sort of thing is very difficult to tune out of a car, and for a limited-edition one like this it probably wasn't considered worth it, but the effect is to make the R32 seem like a late prototype which still needs a few weeks' work before it's ready for production.I wish I liked the R32. It looks terrific, and it's certainly quick. But it is no kind of a sports saloon, nor any kind of a luxury cruiser, nor any kind of anything really, and there are plenty of other Golfs which show that Volkswagen can do the job far better than it has here.Second opinion: While not being a spokesman for Volkswagen, I'm fairly confident that this car has been introduced largely to get customers used to seeing an R32 Golf in the catalogue, so that the longer-wheelbase next-generation R32 (with the engine not so far out front, I expect) won't come as a surprise. That one ought to be a stormer. The test car certainly wasn't at ease going quickly on bumpier B-class and minor roads, but we're partly back to a familiar UK roads/German car problem here: too many of our roads have lousy surfaces, and the German chassis engineers don't quite grasp that. Very good build quality, though, and a sign that, as its new rally programme shows, Volkswagen is going after the sporting driver. Ross Finlay. Engine 3189cc, 6 cylinders Power 237bhp Fuel/CO2 24.6mpg / 276g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 6.6 seconds Top speed 153mph Price £22,340 Details correct at publication date
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