VW Golf R Wagon Spotted Testing In The Snow With Almost No Camo

You could argue that while hot hatches are pretty sweet at the moment, a wagon counterpart is even sweeter. Combining everything you could ever want from the Golf R with space to boot, the Golf R Variant is making a return for fast wagon lovers out there.

The test car here is shockingly uncamouflaged (why bother, I guess), allowing us to clearly see the sporty touches VW has added to its upcoming Variant. Featuring larger intakes next to the grille, bigger wheels, more powerful brakes with blue calipers, and a strake along the feature line near the side mirrors, the upcoming Golf R Variant looks appropriately R-ified.

We aren’t expecting a whole lot of surprises from this car, though. Historically, apart from the extra length, Variants have been pretty much the same with their Golf R siblings.

That means 315 HP and 310 lb-ft of torque from VW’s 2.0L turbocharged inline-four engine, paired to all-wheel-drive and a dual-clutch transmission, as well as many of the latest chassis improvements. The suspension setting might change a little from the hatch to account for the extra length, so it’ll be interesting to see how this compares to the ‘regular’ Golf R.

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The Mk8 R can run the Nürburgring 20 seconds faster than the Mk7, despite only making a few more horsepower. That’s largely down to the vehicle dynamics manager, which VW calls the brain of the car. The concept is that it receives all the information coming from the vehicle’s sensors, makes a decision about driving conditions, and then reacts through the driving systems like ABS, traction control, torque delivery, and more. That’s as opposed to previous systems, whose driving systems all operated independently.

Theoretically, it gives the car a more harmonized feeling and leads to the driver having more confidence and speed.

Volkswagen has not yet set an official unveiling date for the Golf R Variant, but we don’t expect them to wait around too much longer.