Volkswagen Golf R: Now available in handy estate form!

VOLKSWAGEN needs to get a move on. The coolest car it’s announced in years won’t be going on sale here until next summer, but I get the feeling it’ll be hot stuff in Lapland almost immediately.

There are no prizes for guessing what the Golf R Estate is – it is, put simply, the fastest hot hatch Volkswagen currently offers, with the added bonus of 605 litres of luggage space. Drop the back seats and that more than doubles, meaning you can cart a couple of cupboards home and still get to 60mph in a shade over five seconds.

Anyone who’s familiar with the Audi RS2, the Skoda Octavia RS Estate or the Volvo 850 T5 will know where I’m going with this one; hotted-up estate cars are MUCH cooler than hot hatchbacks. It’s something to do with an entire genre of car associated with antique dealers and Sunday afternoon schleps to B&Q being able to embarrass hot hatches and – as much as I hate to admit it – small sports cars at the lights.

Fast estates are cool because the boys in blue love ‘em too. One of my earliest and most exciting outings was sitting alongside a traffic officer as he reeled in speeding motorists on the roads of North Wales, and he needed something both quick enough to administer a bloody nose to a Golf GTi and capacious enough to carry a set of traffic cones in the back. His weapon of choice was pretty standard issue to most forces at the time. A Skoda Octavia RS Estate, of course.

If you appreciate bonkers-fast estates, you’ll understand why the prospect of a Golf R Estate is far more enticing than the 300bhp hatchback it’s based on, but I also get the feeling its talents would be perfect for a bloke I know who lives up North.

He works in the delivery business and has a big job coming up next month – a job that requires dropping off a heck of a lot of stuff in a single night. Every single year he insists on doing it the old-fashioned way, but the combination of the new arrival’s grand total of 1,606 litres of loadspace, the sure-footedness of the permanent all-wheel-drive system and the 300bhp shove of the 2.0 litre turbo engine would make it perfect for his line of work.

Make no mistake, I reckon my mate Nick would do well to get a Golf R Estate in his garage.