Case why?
At a time when the convertible is out of favor, when going through the archives, the arrival of the Volkswagen Golf R Cabriolet stands out, now ten years ago. The last generation Golf with fabric hood was not only a GTI, there was also an R version in the spring of 2013. They did not have to do that, it turned out after a test.
In February 2013, Volkswagen announced the Golf R Cabriolet. Wolfsburg had previously shown a concept that kicked it up to 270 hp, just like the then closed Golf VI R. Eventually it became 265 hp for the production model. How come? Because Volkswagen eventually gave the convertible front-wheel drive instead of four-wheel drive. The reinforcements needed to compensate for the loss of the roof took up so much space that there was no room left for driving the rear wheels.
Golf R Convertible had Scirocco R powertrain
The car therefore has the powertrain of the front-wheel drive Scirocco R. And it has 265 hp. Perhaps it was a good thing that the 4Motion was omitted because in the end the open R weighed 1,515 kilos! That was almost 100 kilos heavier than the closed Golf R, which did have four-wheel drive. The R Cabrio therefore needed 6.4 seconds to sprint from 0 to 100 km / h, the close 5.5 seconds.
The Golf VII was already there in 2013, but there was never a convertible, so Volkswagen did what it often did with convertibles, the old generation was allowed to continue to exist as an open variant next to the new. Even until 2016. The technology of the Golf R Cabrio was also quickly outdated because the R version of the VII also appeared in 2013, with 300 instead of 270 hp. It makes the story of the Golf R Cabrio even more special, apart from the fact that no really fast versions of the Golf Cabrio have ever existed in the past. With a price that started at €56,690, it became a hopeless mission.
We drove the Volkswagen Golf R Convertible in the summer of 2013.
In the test (also check out this video) that we made with the Golf R Cabrio in the summer of 2013, the conclusion was: Looks nice, but superfluous as a product, not overly nice and very expensive. No added value compared to the GTI Cabrio, except for the name. Nice for collectors in ten years.
Golf R Convertible: not a collector’s item in terms of prices
But even the latter we now have to question: we find two for sale in the used section of our site, for prices that are firm, but not of the level you would expect from a collector’s item.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl