By switching it off, I was able to let the driving wheels claw their way down to the pavement and create some forward momentum. A half-inch of snow afforded an opportunity to try it on my fairly steep drive and it failed miserably. Their version of traction control was nothing to brag about, either. With a stomp on the gas pedal, you can get a ride as wild as you would with a bucking strap – VW is really behind the curve in managing torque steer.
While the fun associated with the old turbosÕ on-off nature is gone, there’s still enough torque steer and traction issues to make a driver attentive. (Redline is at 6,500, but there’s no cutoff until well past 7 grand.)
Under full throttle, one gets a hint of the turbo’s good effort the tachometer passes 4,000 rpm and, with some exhaust roar obbligato, zooms on to 7,000. There’s neither boost gauge nor cold-engine warning to tip him off, and in average running, the breadth of the torque curve makes it feel merely as if there’s a larger displacement power source. The casual driver would not know there was a turbo under the hood.
I logged 26 even, storming along country roads for the most part. The turbo/5-speed combo gets EPA estimates of 24 mpg city, 31 highway, which helps. But the V-6 insists on the barrel-aged stuff, too. The only down side of VW’s implementation here is that, to achieve 100 hp per liter output, the company has kept a rather high (9.5:1) compression ratio, which mandates premium fuel.
Most everyone in the industry has learned how to banish the hobgoblins, closing the gap between theory and practicality. It’s an elegant device, but like so many such elegant solutions, fraught with hurdles for the engineers.Įarly turbos suffered from thermal effects – their bearings burned out because of the high temperatures involved – were quite peaky, i.e., effective only through a narrow range of engine revolutions, and were slow to react to the driver’s request for more power. Consequently, peak power output is typically 50 percent greater than it would be, all else being equal. As a result, considerably more fuel-air mix can be introduced to the cylinders than would naturally occur. When the engine revs, the hot side is propelled by the gases which are the product of combustion, dragging along its yoke mate and thus pressurizing the intake path. One resides in the exhaust stream, the other in the intake path.
Veedub has done a remarkable job of civilizing what once was a fractious beast – maybe too good a job for those of us who enjoyed turbo quirks.Ī turbocharger is in essence a pump. (A 200+ hp version of the six is coming later this year – that could call for a re-examination.)
For one thing, the base price on the turbo GTI with five-speed manual is $18,910, $1,385 less than one propelled by the VR6, which itself has been “decontented” to make the price more appealing. Much as I admire the V-6, I would now opt for the turbo. VW has turned the conventional wisdom on its head: the smaller, turbocharged engine is the more flexible, perhaps better suited to pairing with an automatic, while the six can take better advantage of five driver-stirred gears. 174, an almost negligible margin – but the turbo’s maximal twisting force is available between 1,950 and 5,000 rpm, while the six is more peaky. To be sure, the six still makes more torque – 181 foot-pounds vs. At that figure, it eclipses the power output of the six, and does it 300 rpm lower, at 5,500 rpm. The big news this year, though, is that the turbo has been bumped from 150 hp to 180, an impressive 20 percent increment. Used to be an easy call – money aside – because of the six’s superior output. The GTI, a funky two-door hatchback, however, offers two ways of getting the blood pumping, and as of this year, the choice is tougher than ever.Īs in 2001, you can choose between a sweet 2.8-liter V-6 and a turbo four displacing a mere 1.8 liters. Neither the turbodiesel’s 90 hp nor the 2-liter’s 115 is likely to stir the soul. Never mind that it had skinny tires and a mere 90 hp, it spawned a host of imitators and convinced us that even though fuel prices seemed to be heading skyward, driving fun had not been eliminated along with the fire-breathing, big-block V-8.Īlmost 20 years later, they’re still at it, offering up a pair of potent alternatives to the more pedestrian Golf, which is available for 2002 with either a service-able 2-liter gas engine or an abstemious turbodiesel. The Volkswagen GTI, it can be argued, is the one that showed America that small cars can be fun.īack in the early ’80s, Volkswagen produced it as a sporty variant on the Rabbit theme.