In recent years, the Volkswagen Golf R has become somewhat of an odd proposition. It’s deservedly renowned for its versatility—a comfortable super tourer among hot hatches one minute, and an apex ...

The 2025 Volkswagen Golf R is no longer just an all-wheel-drive GTI-plus hot hatch. Volkswagen pushed the R to a new level with the introduction of the torque-vectoring rear differential that arrived ...

Since picking up his first set of MicroMachine toy cars as a toddler, Chris knew he had a passion for automobiles embedded in his soul. It wasn't until he started flipping through car magazines a ...

We recently sampled these changes in an unusual but very rad way: Volkswagen tossed us the keys to the Golf R and told us to tear up an ice track in northern Sweden. In these conditions we couldn’t ...

What makes a hot hatchback even better? More hatchback—that is, when it’s stretched out into a station wagon. We all know most Americans aren’t enthusiastic about the body style, but the enthusiasts ...

If you like driving, but also live in the real world, there's no better option than a hot hatchback. Hot hatches combine performance with practicality and (usually) affordability, and Volkswagen is ...

At TopSpeed, William Clavey is Editor-at-Large, where he focuses on authority and exclusive content, reviews, news articles, features, and opinion pieces all while sharing his passion for everything ...

The Volkswagen Golf R popularized the hot-hatch genre of sporty, higher-performance versions of more-pedestrian models, starting with the transformation of the European Golf in the 1970s and the ...