My Golf R Estate has arrived

almoststew1990 said:
So was that Top Gear exaggerating to prove a point or was it a genuine drawback with the FQ400? I'm not really a turbo person.. or technical person... or intelligent person :p
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They were exagarating to prove a point.

When would you ever be:

a) Driving at 30mph in 5th gear
b) Immediately requiring maximum acceleration from the car

I'm going to go with... never.
 
VincentHanna said:
That was a rubbish test even for top gear.

Like someone else said, it literally didn't get enough rpm to spool the turbo, no lag involved.
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almoststew1990 said:
So was that Top Gear exaggerating to prove a point or was it a genuine drawback with the FQ400? I'm not really a turbo person.. or technical person... or intelligent person :p
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It was just to make the point that they wanted to make.

It wasn't lag... it was just not being driven properly :p





For the OP:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18692985
 
True, but what I mean is was the point they were admittedly exaggerating a valid point? When driving a car like that were you never where the power was? Was it like off (town) / on (hooning) with no smooth transition between?
 
almoststew1990 said:
True, but what I mean is was the point they were admittedly exaggerating a valid point? When driving a car like that were you never where the power was? Was it like off (town) / on (hooning) with no smooth transition between?
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It is not a valid point. To try and drive a four cylinder car at 800rpm then expect acceleration is pure idiocy.

When the car is in the boost threshold it will react no different to a Golf R while in that threshold. It just so happens that it's threshold is far higher up the rev range. Great for racing. Not great for the day to day life of driving behind old dear in her Honda Jazz.
 
Mitsubishi in Japan were always quite horrified that the UK was offering power like that anyway.

It's the same in most 4 cylinder petrols, My Cupra R was performed like a normal 1.8 litre car below 2000 rpm.
 
SDK^ said:
The FQ 340/400 Evo 8's hit peak toque from above 5k rpm and peak power from 6.5k rpm. They pretty much needed to be driven like an NA to get the best out of them.
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9/10's were peak torque around 3000rpm with peak power around 6000rpm, the faster 360/400 and MR models made peak power at 7000rpm and pulled hard to 7500rpm, power band was impressive and very entertaining. My FQ360 the turbo was spooling around 2500rpm and accelerating well and above 3000rpm all hell broke loose right up to 7500rpm. :)

Golf R is far smoother and PDK a serious improvement but Mitsubishi were doing it ten years ago with good usable power bands, I know I owned one. :)
 
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adam cool dude said:
How does DSG help how much power an engine makes top end?
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Because with a decent auto/dsg where the engine makes its power becomes far less relevant as the gearbox ensures the engine is always in the power band.

Diesels are a perfect example - there is almost nothing more frustrating than the narrow power band of a diesel engine and a manual gearbox, constantly running out of power and frustratingly having to keep it in a narrow range to get the most out of the engine.

Yet with a decent autobox, suddenly all this goes away.
 
[TW]Fox;28762272 said:
Because with a decent auto/dsg where the engine makes its power becomes far less relevant as the gearbox ensures the engine is always in the power band.

Diesels are a perfect example - there is almost nothing more frustrating than the narrow power band of a diesel engine and a manual gearbox, constantly running out of power and frustratingly having to keep it in a narrow range to get the most out of the engine.

Yet with a decent autobox, suddenly all this goes away.
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Yet revs will always be better. You have to run longer gearing to compensate the lack of revs. DSG box or no DSG box.

A Golf R that had power higher up the rev range say 6k to 7/8k would be a faster car than what you have now.
 
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adam cool dude said:
Yet revs will always be better. You have to run longer gearing to compensate the lack of revs. DSG box or no DSG box.

A Golf R that had power higher up the rev range say 6k to 7/8k would be a faster car than what you have now.
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Revs are only better if all you care about is peak power, and then only if you have a torque profile to support it, because power is a function of both torque and revs.

The catch is that without complicated sequential forced induction or other the technical solutions, higher torque at higher revs comes at the expense of higher torque at lower revs, which in turn means less power at the low end, meaning slower acceleration unless you happen to be in the power band and worse drivability (try driving a highly strung na car with no vtec or similar and you see exactly what the issue is). For race cars it doesn't matter, for a road car you don't want to have to drive at 9k rpm everywhere.

If everyone loved thrashing a car all the time the rx8 would have been far more successful than it was.
 
adam cool dude said:
A Golf R that had power higher up the rev range say 6k to 7/8k would be a faster car than what you have now.
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This is not neccesarily true.

If it is true, explain why a 2012 BMW 528i (245bhp) is quicker than a higher revving, more powerful 2012 BMW 530i (272bhp)?

The latter has more power, higher up the rev range, than the former..
 
Lovely car and definitely the best colour!

Couple of things I don't like about the car is the wheels, I really wish they did the 19" Praetorian (I think that's what they were called?) in 18", for me they look a million times better.

The only other thing I don't like is the cabin's centre console. Looks too much like a Corsa for my liking :p

In terms of driving how are you finding it against the 1 series? I've only driven a few hundred miles in the hatchback R but I did find it inspired quite a bit more confidence thrashing around the lanes, I think this was mainly down the the 1 series having quite a bit more roll to it than I would like.
 
Sure, the 1 M Sport has more roll but is also less compliant over bumps and ultimately less comfortable than the R.
 
From my own experience of a test drive in a 2013 m135i the R feels more planted and direct on the road. The chassis and steering give more confidence than I found in the old m. Maybe the new m135i has improved I need to test drive one :D
 
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