Volkswagen Golf GTI 2025 Review - International

There is no confirmation on the numbers from Volkswagen about the 2025 Golf GTI, largely because it’s still nine months away, at best. That said, the importer has confirmed that the upgrade of their hatchback favourite will be close to the current pricing, which starts from $55,000. The new model will slide in under the price of the fully loaded Golf GTI, which currently retails for around $58,000.

There are several significant steps forward from the outgoing Volkswagen Golf GTI to the 2025 version, including redesigned LED headlights, a new taillight cluster and, finally, an illuminated Volkswagen grille badge. That was illegal under European Union law until recently, and the awkwardness of the unfinished night-time look of the Golf GTI’s nose, with a black bit in the middle of the illuminated character strips, has given way to the revised treatment, which was how the car was supposed to look in the first place.

The new headlights offer 15 per cent longer range on high-beam, and the taillights shine with a 3D effect from their LED system. There’s a closed roof spoiler atop the hatch, and twin matte-black exhaust pipes sit beneath a slightly revised bumper design.

The Golf GTI for 2025 rides on 17-inch Richmond alloy wheels, although the car can be optioned to either 18- or 19-inch alloys. The running gear is largely unchanged, other than tweaks for the progressive steering and the electronic front-axle “differential lock” to distribute drive left or right, maximising traction and minimising wheelspin.

There are also driver-chooser options to toggle between Eco, Comfort, Sport and Individual driving profiles.

Given that most of the heavy metal and the safety bits of the 2025 Volkswagen Golf GTI are broadly similar to the outgoing car’s, there’s no reason to expect any reduction of its five-star ANCAP safety score. The passive safety list includes front and side airbags for the driver and front passenger and head airbags for all four outboard seats.

Even though the current Golf GTI trended a little softer than the hard-core traditionalists preferred, most buyers were satisfied with the car’s technology package, leaving VW little reason for a big technological departure from the status quo for the 2025 Volkswagen Golf GTI.

The biggest change is that the 2025 car switches everything across from the ubiquitous MQB platform (it sits underneath a bewildering array of Volkswagen Group cars) to Volkswagen’s upgraded MQB Evo layout, bringing with it big improvements in software and infotainment.

But the suspension of the existing Golf GTI has been massively re-educated for even stiffer and edgier ride quality, facing down criticism of the current Golf GTI’s ride comfort.

Riding 15mm lower than a stock Golf hatch, the Golf GTI has seen its front spring rates raised by five per cent, while its rear springs are an astonishing 15 per cent stiffer, hinting that VW engineers have sought to improve chassis balance and poise, rather than ride quality. Even the steering is seven per cent faster than before.

Adaptive dampers (Dynamic Chassis Control, or DCC) control the springs and give the car a broader spread of operational range, and you can pick your preference on the infotainment system’s slider.

The front end has been tweaked to accommodate an electronically controlled limited-slip differential.

The 2.0-litre, turbocharged petrol four-cylinder engine has always been a cracker, and it has been given more firepower for the 2025 Volkswagen Golf GTI.

It now ekes out 195kW of power - up 15kW - and the 370Nm torque figure remains the same. The EA888 motor, first used in the Mark VII Golf GTI a full generation ago, is now dubbed EA888 LK3 Evo4 internally, and it also sits under the bonnet of the Golf R, delivering even more power (245kW).

Australia never took the manual-gearbox version of the Golf GTI Mk8, and now the rest of the world has followed suit, dumping it in favour of the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. It’s all enough to get the Golf GTI to 100km/h in 5.9 seconds, and reach an electronically limited top speed of 250km/h.

There are no claims yet from Volkswagen Australia about the price paid at the bowser for the 2025 Golf GTI’s power boost, but it won’t be much, if anything.

Its European WLTP number chimes in at 7.1 to 7.3 litres/100km, depending on the wheel and tyre size, and CO2 emissions between 162 and 167 grams/km.

The party trick for the 2025 Volkswagen Golf GTI is that stiffer suspension – counter-intuitive as that may seem. While the firmer ride was a backward step after the GTI MkVII, the even firmer ride of the latest Golf GTI works… in Europe at least.

Stiffening the rear more than the front lends the Golf GTI for 2025 a lively front end that is enthusiastically responsive to driver inputs, without ever feeling too pointy or darty.

And the rear end feels happy to move around into a corner if it’s pushed hard, but it will also hold that line as long and strong as any driver wants.

Then, when you want to cruise in traffic as Golf GTI drivers unfortunately need to do for 95 per cent of their wheel time, it doesn’t suffer in comfort; the systems just work. There are big steps forward in lane-keeping calibration and intrusiveness, in mid-corner poise, in how quickly the voice commands work and in how much time you keep your eyes off the road while you’re searching for functions on the multimedia display.

The most obtrusive element is the engine, but in a positive way. While it doesn’t punch any harder in the mid range than the current car, or in in-gear acceleration, the top end of the rev range turns into a party again. There’s a throaty, peaky roar to its work beyond about 5000rpm, and it responds snappily to any change in the accelerator-pedal angle.

The Volkswagen Golf GTI for 2025 has grip aplenty, and it’s easy to manage once that’s been used up. It can be driven calmly through bends, with the driver flexing on torque. It can be driven swiftly, with higher revs. It can be driven aggressively, too.

And it can do it all, easily, in an enormously functional range – no matter whether on a racetrack or in day-to-day commuting.

Much has been made of the Volkswagen Group’s struggles with infotainment over the last five years or so, and while it’s not perfect, this facet of interior design is at least much improved with the 2025 Volkswagen Golf GTI.

For starters, the new infotainment system has much more computing gristle than its predecessor, and it works faster when it’s asked to do something. It is also simpler to use, and the layout is easily adjusted. With an obvious “home” button, it’s easy to drill down and mess around, and still get back to where you want to be.

There are some issues, though, and the biggest of them remains the lackadaisical Apple CarPlay functionality, which sometimes leaves the user waiting up to five seconds after a new song has started playing before it updates the title and artist details. Volkswagen calls this operating system “MIB4”, and it operates through a 12.9-inch touchscreen multimedia system and a 10.2-inch digital instrument cluster, directly in front of the driver.

The bigger screen stands proud of the dashboard, and is bordered at the bottom by illuminated slider bars for temperature and volume control, but there’s a clever scrolling knob in the console, behind the gear selector, that controls both volume and, at a downward click, the driving modes.

Its cleverest bit is that the screen keeps the selected topic in the central area, but maintains the widgets above and below it, giving the driver a pathway into different functions to minimise the eyes-off-the-road time.

An optional voice assistant combines online databases and ChatGPT, so its answers aren’t limited to Golf GTI-related questions.

The instrument cluster is switchable between three graphic layouts. One of them, thankfully, is a classical round dial (MINI has also done something similar for the Cooper), and it also has a digitised version of a classic tachometer, revving to 8000rpm. There is also a round gauge for instant torque output, plus gauges for turbo boost pressure, oil and water temperature.

A 480-Watt Harmon Kardon sound system and a head-up display are options for the European market.

The essentials, though, remain. The luggage space is still a useful 374 litres, which can be extended to 1230 litres with the rear seats folded down, and front and rear legroom remain the same as the current car’s.

For almost five decades now, the default answer to this question would have been: yes, of course, buy a Volkswagen Golf GTI.

The current car’s less composed ride and handling compromise, combined with its baulky infotainment system, meant that it became more of a “probably” than an “of course”. So far though, the answer for the 2025 Volkswagen Golf GTI is, again, “yes, of course”.

Anybody wanting a warm-to-hot hatch could, of course, head to South Korea for a change, but wouldn’t find the same material quality in the interior.

There are more rivals now than there have been in the past, and they’re competing in a shrinking hatchback market as one-tonne utes take over in their varying body styles.

But of the existing hot-hatch competitors, none seem as intelligently packaged for a broad use context as the Golf GTI.

2025 Volkswagen Golf GTI at a glance:
Price: TBA
Available: April 2025
Powertrain: 2.0-litre, four-cylinder turbo-petrol
Output: 195kW/370Nm
Transmission: seven-speed dual-clutch automatic
Fuel: TBC
CO2: TBC
Safety rating: Not tested

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