Volkswagen's 2014 update of the Scirocco did nothing to alter the fact that this is at heart quite an old car. It's one of the few VW Group cars of this size not based on the still quite recent MQB platform. It’s instead a closer relative of the Mk5 and Mk6 Golfs, the latter being simply a reskinned version of the former. Even a brand new Scirocco is therefore in a sense over a decade old.
In the case of the R, the top performer in the range, the Scirocco is a very different beast from the Golf R, despite the similar names. Both have a 2.0-litre turbo petrol engine, but the one in the Golf produces a maximum of 297bhp while the Scirocco R, though more powerful than it used to be, has a more modest 267bhp.
Intriguingly, the two cars also sound quite different. The Golf's exhaust has been designed in such a way that it can sound sometimes like a five-cylinder Audi and sometimes, oddly, like a hot Subaru Impreza. There's never any doubt that the Scirocco's engine is an in-line four, though it does have a pleasant rasp when you're revving it hard.
The Golf is also four-wheel drive. The Scirocco sends all its power to the front wheels, and as a result there's a certain amount of torque steer, though it's very well controlled and mostly apparent only at full throttle in one of the lower gears.
There's a choice of damper settings, and the one you choose will depend on personal preference and your tolerance for bumps in the road being transferred to your hind quarters. The Sport setting makes the car feel as if the shock absorbers are dominating the springs, and is suitable only for very smooth surfaces.
Ride quality and torque steer apart, the R feels fairly subdued in corners, and is more interesting when accelerating out of them. It does this quite rapidly, as you can guess from the 0-62mph time of 5.7 seconds for the close-ratio six-speed manual version tested here.
DSG semi-automatic transmission, which adds £1,500 to the basic price of £32,580, brings the 0-62mph time down to 5.5 seconds, but the manual gear change is very good and I think I'd stick with that if we were buying a Scirocco R.
We probably wouldn't do this, though. Although the Scirocco is very attractive, and much better-looking than the Golf, what’s unsettling is the alarming lack of visibility caused by the use of very small windows.
The Scirocco's trump card is its appearance. The Golf R is slightly more expensive, but it's faster, much better to drive and in our view only a tweak of the front dampers away from being the ideal hot hatch. The only reason to pick the Scirocco instead is that it looks absolutely gorgeous, and that’s understandable even if we don’t think it’s the best choice.
