OPEN WIDE, SAY R

IT’S HARD TO impress Georg Kacher. When it comes to new cars, the doyen of German car journos has been there, done it and got the XXXL t-shirt. So when Volkswagen let him loose in a Golf R for the first international drive, we got a bit excited because old Georg had got a bit excited. “An excellent and cohesive hot hatch” he effused in the pages of MOTOR. “Awesome where it counts – on twisty back roads.” Consider our curiosity well and truly piqued.

What was quite clear from Georg’s drive and Curt Dupriez’s quick taste on track at Sydney Motorsport park was that the Golf R was going to knock over the likes of the BMW M135i xDrive and the Mercedes-AMG A35 without breaking too much of a sweat, so rather than line up a largely ceremonial sacrifice, we thought laterally. Rather than attempt to put up a like-for-like contender, of which its more expensive and less dynamic Audi S3 cousin seems the only thing likely to get close, we decided to pick three other vehicles that tease the thread off into neatly divergent directions. Should you want something more hardcore, how about the Toyota GR Yaris Rallye? Something easier to live with? We’ve got Audi’s SQ2 to see if jacking up an S3 a few inches has that much of an effect on its dynamic capability. If the Golf R’s $66k asking price seems a bit steep, we’ve also procured something that’s a little less of an ask with the $49k Hyundai i30 Sedan N.

First the elephant in the room needs to be addressed, and that’s the price of the Golf R. It only seems like yesterday that we were being heartily impressed by the $47,490 Mk7.5 Golf R Grid and yet now we’re being