Volkswagen Golf R-Line review: What’s it like to live with in Malaysia?

There’s this idea that if you want to appeal to young people, you need to have a bunch of screens everywhere. You need to have a product that is super tech-focused, or at least something that seems tech-focused because apparently the only thing the smartphone generation wants is more smartphone-like things.

While most of the time, these are just novelties that you can largely ignore, where it becomes an issue is when these frivolous appeals happen at the cost of something actually good. And nowhere is this more apparent than the automotive industry.

This is the new Volkswagen Golf R-Line, and the Golf is probably one of the most iconic cars the company makes. It’s been around for ages and is almost universally loved. But, times have changed. Young people aren’t driving as much as they used to and as a carmaker, VW had to make some changes to their icon in an attempt to appeal to this new generation of non-drivers.

The newest thing Volkswagen has done with the Golf is give it an all new “digital cockpit”. There is a significant absence of physical buttons in here. In fact, pretty much every control from the centre console to the steering wheel is now touch sensitive.

While that seems like a good tech-forward approach to appeal to the new generation, I think that it’s one of the worst things you could do to a car. And this is coming from a tech reviewer. You see, driving is something that requires 100% of your attention to do safely, which means I don’t have the luxury of looking at what controls I need to be touching to adjust stuff like the air conditioning.

I need to be able to go off of feel and muscle memory and if that needs to rely on something that’s as unintuitive as a touch pad, then it’s no good. Especially if you need to rely on a screen to adjust something as simple as the fan speed on your air conditioning. There’s no dial or knob here, instead you need to tap on the Climate touch button in the centre console then use the touchscreen to make adjustments.

I don’t think I need to tell you that that’s almost an impossible task to do without taking your eyes off the road. To their credit, VW has given the Golf fixed touch controls for adjusting volume and temperature which sit just below the screen. But for some reason there’s no backlight illumination.

Because of their position on the dashboard, it’s difficult to see even during the day, so imagine trying to make adjustments at night. I can’t believe I’m saying this but using the main touchscreen might actually be more convenient.

Here’s the thing, I’m all for innovation, but it should be centered around something that’s meaningfully better. If, for example, this full touch control scheme can give me a different, potentially better way of interacting with the car that takes advantage of the fact that it is touch, I would be down to put up with a slight learning curve.

But it doesn’t. What VW has done is essentially replace all the physical buttons with touch buttons and called it a day. Even the slide to adjust volume doesn’t work the way you’d expect because there’s no hold command or acceleration to it which means it functions almost exactly the same as just tapping the volume up or down button.

This feels like it was done for the sake of being done and that to me is the worst reason to change anything up. It’s kind of like when your dad is trying to be cool, or hip, or in with the crowd. But I don’t really want that, I just want you to be my dad. To care about what I care about, and in this case, it’s not getting into an accident.

Thankfully, the controls on the steering wheel are a little more well thought out. A little. There is backlighting, for example, and even little divots and to help guide your fingers to the right controls. But the fact that they’re touch comes right back to bite you in the butt. More than once, I’ve had an issue with accidental touches and pressing the wrong control when I was trying to adjust something while driving.

It’s infuriating that I need to peel my eyes off the road to adjust even something that’s on the steering wheel. And if you’re thinking that modern cars these days have a whole bunch of safety features so it’s not that dangerous anymore—well, this modern car doesn’t.

For a car that seems obsessed with “new technology” there are almost no pre-collision safety features. There’s no AEB (autonomous emergency braking), no lane keep, no blind spot warning, nothing. All you get is a rear camera and ESC (electronic stability control). I can’t help but be disappointed in the choices that VW has made here because despite all of these shortcomings, I really enjoyed my time in the Golf.

In my experience so far, VW makes nice cars that are nice places to be in. And I can see a lot of this DNA in this Golf…once you peel back all the try hard to appeal to young’uns but failing nonsense.

The Golf’s cabin is a very nice place to be in even for long periods of time. Although I would have preferred leather, the seats are plush and comfortable with plenty of space for my behind. Yet, it also does a good job at holding you in place, and supporting you. My only complaint about them are the manual controls and the fact that you have to crank a knob to adjust lean.

Y’know, an electric driver’s seat would have been a nice tech upgrade here and I think young people would like that a lot because we’re allergic to manual labour. But it’s hard to argue with the fit and finish in most of the cabin. Everything you touch or interact with daily like the steering wheel and door handle feels well put together. There are a lot of good textures here, and a sense that a lot of it was made to last.

Particularly surprising was how nice the displays look in this car. I’ve heard complaints that it’s laggy and unresponsive, but I have to say I haven’t encountered anything that’s out of the ordinary for a car. Sure, if you look for it you can find areas where the Golf was built down to a price because it was. A lack of compartments and segmented storage stands out the most to me.

There are barely any cubbies here to keep your small items like keys. There’s nowhere to stash your sunglasses. And even though there’s wireless CarPlay and Android Auto, there’s no wireless charger. It definitely feels a little more sparse than VW’s other more premium offerings but, I don’t think any of those are deal breakers to me.

The thing that made me furrow my brow when I first saw this car though was the fact that it didn’t come with VW’s signature Direct Shift Gearbox. Initially, I thought it would be a big problem. The DSG transmission is so quintessentially VW to me that it seemed ridiculous to exclude it from one of your most iconic cars.

But now that I’ve gotten to spend more time with the Golf, I don’t know if I still feel that way.

This car is powered by a 1.4 litre turbocharged 4-cylinder engine producing about 147 hp, and it sends that power to the front wheels through an 8-speed automatic transmission. And it just works. Around town, I doubt any regular driver would notice the difference between this and a DSG except for the fact that this doesn’t judder at low speeds the way VW’s dual-clutch transmission does.

It shifts really smoothly, and when you want to quickly make an overtake or pull into the next lane, the gearbox is responsive enough to give you the power when you need it. Even when you engage in a little sporty driving in the twisty back roads, this thing holds up. In fact, I like it way more than the BMW 218i’s dual clutch transmission because when you put your foot down exiting a corner, the car actually gives you power.

All of this pairs really nicely with the way the vehicle was setup. While it’s comfortable around town and on the highway, it also feels sharp enough in the bends. There’s plenty of grip, which is confidence inspiring, so it’s very easy to have a good time on a nice road.

VW clearly knows how to make a nice car. Even if we’re talking about looks, I think the R Line especially in this grey colourway strikes a nice balance between sporty and understated.

I am, however, a big fan of hatchbacks so there is definitely some bias here. But, I mean, what’s not to like about a hatch? It’s very practical, with plenty of space in the back and in the boot. And even though hatchbacks are small cars, the roof line doesn’t swoop low so there’s also enough headroom for most people.

My only gripe about the way this car looks would be the wheels. I think they’re a little too small, which affects the proportions—making it seem like a larger car than it probably is.

Even though the RM169,990 Golf R-Line feels like it’s going through its mid-life crisis, trying desperately to seem cool to the younger crowd, I don’t think you can ignore the fact that Volkswagen knows how to make a good car. It’s just a shame that to get to the bits that make it a good car, you have to wade through the entirely unnecessary attempts at revamping the interior to appeal to the smartphone generation.

Here’s the thing, there’s probably some way to make all of those touch screen smartphone-like controls work in a car. Some way that makes it not dangerous, and I’ll be honest, I don’t know what way that is right now. But I do know, that it’s not this way.

Maybe for a future like this, we need self-driving cars. We need the kind of vehicle that doesn’t require our full attention to be placed on the road ahead just so we can get where we’re going safely. As it is, there are already so many things vying for our attention every waking second of our existence. Just consider how many times you’ve encountered a dangerous driver on the road only to find out that the reason they’re like that is because they were on their phone.

We don’t also need our cars to fight for what attention we have left. If anything, carmakers should work to reduce our reliance on screens as much as possible.
Or, we could meet in the middle. You could give me some knobs and physical buttons while you forge ahead with this completely unnecessary touchscreen future.

Because otherwise, we might just miss out on the incredible car that lies underneath all of this poorly executed nonsense.