I wish I liked the Volkswagen Scirocco more than I do. It is a stonkingly good-looking car in road trim, and so much more so when prepared for motor racing (as VW has done with some success for the Nürburgring 24-hour event) that I just want to clamber past the door bars of the rollcage and start setting lap times. On appearance alone, the Scirocco is a winner as far as I'm concerned.But I've yet to drive one and be overwhelmed with a desire to keep it for ever. Couple of personal reasons for that, and you're welcome to disagree with both of them. Number one, the windows are so small and surrounded by such thick pillars that it's the devil's job trying to look out of it, which would be understandable in a mid-engined supercar but is just perverse in a hatchback-based coupé. Number two, Sciroccos are no more interesting to drive than equivalent Golfs, even though they look as if they should be.The Scirocco R is a case in point. It's closely related to the Golf R, though it should be made clear right away that they're not identical. Each has a two-litre turbo petrol engine, but the one in the Golf is more powerful by the small matter of 5bhp. It should not therefore come as a surprise that the Golf is slightly quicker, until you bear in mind that it's less aerodynamic than the Scirocco, is slightly heavier and has to contend with the extra drag of a four-wheel drive system while the Scirocco drives through the front wheels only. Quite why the Golf is 0.3 seconds quicker from 0-62mph is, bearing all that in mind, something of a puzzle.Be that as it may, the Scirocco is still pretty quick, and if you rev the engine hard it sounds suitably purposeful. The ride is okay - nothing special, but it could have been a lot worse - and the cornering ability is tremendous, with more than enough grip to cope with the available 261bhp. There's a slight suggestion that if you gave this car the absolute beans on a race track it would eventually succumb to understeer, but on the road it feels very well-balanced, and suggests that the decision to make the Golf four-wheel drive was a case of overkill.Those comments assume that the three-mode Adaptive Chassis Control system (which affects the damping, steering and throttle response) is in the Normal setting, which a couple of day's experimenting convinced me was the one to stick with. The other options are Comfort, which makes me feel seasick, and Sport, which makes the ride substantially harsher with no apparent handling benefit, though it might work better on smooth German roads than on rough British ones.Whichever one you pick, the Scirocco R isn't especially entertaining to drive, which is something that has become a characteristic of high-performance Volkswagens over the last couple of years. This may be related to the large amount of grip I mentioned earlier. In this safety-conscious age it feels strange to be recommending that a car should have less grip than might otherwise be the case, but here I think it might work.You want - and you get - limpet-like attraction to the tarmac in something with more than 500bhp such as the Audi R8 V10, but it can be overdone when the maximum power available is 261bhp. Early Mazda MX-5s had absolutely no more adhesion than they needed to, and I think the Scirocco R would be a lot more fun if it were set up the same way.The strange thing is that the Scirocco is even less enthralling than the Golf R, which gives its front tyres so much less to do (because it's four-wheel drive) despite being more powerful. And neither is as much fun as the considerably cheaper SEAT León Cupra R, which has exactly the same output as the Scirocco and is also front-wheel drive.If it were more interesting, I think I could just about accept the Scirocco R's silliness regarding visibility. As things stand, though, I think that this car, like all other Sciroccos, is worth buying only if you have fallen helplessly in love with its shape, which I admit would not be difficult. Engine 1984 cc, 4 cylinders Power 265 bhp @6000 rpm Torque 258 ib/ft @2500 rpm Transmission 6 speed manual Fuel/CO2 34.9 mpg / 189 g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 6sec Top speed 155 mph Price From £28475.00 approx Release date 01/01/2010
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