Hi guys,
My wife has recently taken delivery of a new golf R-Line, and I must say its a really great package. We toyed briefly with a Gti, but at $14K more we felt it wasn't justified. And she hated the tartan seats, so we'd have had to add the $4k leather upgrade!
The R-line for those who don't know, is basically a highline golf with a body kit, 18" wheels, tints, all black interior, R steering wheel (flat bottomed ugghh) and R-line sports seats. Some say they have lowered sports suspension too, but not 100% sure if that's true.
Good points so far:
1. adaptive cruise control - works brilliantly in traffic and at highway speeds. Until muppets cut in front and the thing throws the anchors on!
2. DSG gearbox has come a long way since the early ones, and while a little sluggish at take offs (compared to traditional autos), works brilliantly at open road speeds with the paddles and rev matching on downshifts.
3. Handling - after driving both gti and this car back to back you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart from the drivers seat at NZ road speeds. Super flat with no body roll, and the S001 bridgestones stick really well.
4. Engine - its only a 1.4 but for the most part it seems much larger. Pulls strongly throughout the range and hardly uses any gas either. 5. Navigation - can be set while driving, unlike the CX5 which had a safety lock. Nav details are also on the instrument cluster.
6. Android auto, Carplay - both seem pretty good but haven't really had much of a play yet.
Not so good points:
1. Lane assist doesnt always work - and to be fair, its not supposed to and promptly tells you to steer for yourself! It also causes a weird disconnection between the driver and the road as its often tweaking the wheel to centre the car in the lane.
2. Some other collision avoidance feature. Will stop the car from hitting objects at low speed. ie if a person steps out in front, or a wall in a carpark. Unfortunately it thinks the lip into our garage is a wall and when its on, you cant drive into the garage. Slams the brakes on and gives you a hell of a fright!. Hence the feature has been disabled.
3. Proximity key - works fine walking up to the car - you simply pull the handle and the door opens. However it doesnt lock as you walk away?? you have to either use the remote, or press a button on the door handle. Come on VW this is pathetic!!
4. Auto dip mirrors for reversing dont work - feature is enabled, but nothing happens..
5. Wet traction - Its been a while since we've had a 2wd car, but low speed acceleration in the wet is woeful. Traction control does its best, but it cant stop the inside wheel lighting up if turning ever so slightly.
Overall, we're really thrilled with the change. Not as practical as the Cx5, but way more fun to drive!
Nice review. A couple of annoying glitches there but sounds like a nice car.
welcome to the wheel spin club :)
Isn't really anything you can do to fix it that isn't expensive or has side effects, I'd just deal with it by getting used to it
Some cars I've driven you can change the amount of distance between your car and the one in front of you during adaptive cruise, does the VW not do it? I would assume if you can close the gap enough then the other cars would not try to jump the gap or at least reduce the amount of times this happens
Then again I guess adaptive cruise control needs a minimum operating distance - tbh when I first tested these features I thought they are so cool (adaptive cruise, lane assist, blind spot monitor etc) but I've used them once and then never again kind of thing, blind spot is usually just on by default though
As for the dipping mirrors, make sure you turn the little knob on the door to the left mirror (as if you were going to adjust the left mirrors position) - then put the car into reverse and it should dip - if it does not move I'd take it back to the dealership to get it looked at. The left mirror will not dip unless the left mirror is selected using the knob, if it's in the centre position or on the right mirror or on the heated mirror function it won't dip)
The R-line?s are great looking cars.
Regarding the left mirror dip on reverse, is your mirror control dial turned to L? The mirror will only dip if you leave the dial on L.
Yes it has about six distance settings you can choose between. At motorway speed I had it around the middle setting which does leave quite a bit of a gap. You could definitely close it up, but it comes down to trusting the system!
Interesting about the mirror setting to the left. I always leave it on the heating setting which is neither mirror. Will try it when I get home tonight.
Just remembered another failing of the tech, the blind spot monitoring. It only flashes a small orange light in the mirror if there is a car there. The Mazda beeped at you which was damned useful. The light is a waste of time because if you're looking at the mirror you'd see the vehicle anyway!
Re the reverse mirror dip. You probably have to set its dip position first too. You did with the mk5 anyway. Select reverse, move mirror manually (ie with the joystick control) then when selecting drive it should return once driving above a certain speed. Or should return when engine turned off.
Quote from: The Red Warrior on August 06, 2018, 06:36:06 PM
Re the reverse mirror dip. You probably have to set its dip position first too. You did with the mk5 anyway. Select reverse, move mirror manually (ie with the joystick control) then when selecting drive it should return once driving above a certain speed. Or should return when engine turned off.
bingo! It dipped a little when set to L and in reverse, and then I adjusted it down further. It now moves to the lower setting whenever I select reverse. Cheers guys!
Quote from: Trofeo on August 06, 2018, 04:12:26 PM
Yes it has about six distance settings you can choose between. At motorway speed I had it around the middle setting which does leave quite a bit of a gap. You could definitely close it up, but it comes down to trusting the system!
Interesting about the mirror setting to the left. I always leave it on the heating setting which is neither mirror. Will try it when I get home tonight.
Just remembered another failing of the tech, the blind spot monitoring. It only flashes a small orange light in the mirror if there is a car there. The Mazda beeped at you which was damned useful. The light is a waste of time because if you're looking at the mirror you'd see the vehicle anyway!
That's odd, Audi and Mercs I had driven recently all made a loud beep - maybe the beep sound is just turned off in the settings? Check the owners manual
Quote from: Trofeo on August 06, 2018, 02:25:50 PM
Not so good points:
1. Lane assist doesnt always work - and to be fair, its not supposed to and promptly tells you to steer for yourself! It also causes a weird disconnection between the driver and the road as its often tweaking the wheel to centre the car in the lane.
2. Some other collision avoidance feature. Will stop the car from hitting objects at low speed. ie if a person steps out in front, or a wall in a carpark. Unfortunately it thinks the lip into our garage is a wall and when its on, you cant drive into the garage. Slams the brakes on and gives you a hell of a fright!. Hence the feature has been disabled.
3. Proximity key - works fine walking up to the car - you simply pull the handle and the door opens. However it doesnt lock as you walk away?? you have to either use the remote, or press a button on the door handle. Come on VW this is pathetic!!
4. Auto dip mirrors for reversing dont work - feature is enabled, but nothing happens..
5. Wet traction - Its been a while since we've had a 2wd car, but low speed acceleration in the wet is woeful. Traction control does its best, but it cant stop the inside wheel lighting up if turning ever so slightly.
Overall, we're really thrilled with the change. Not as practical as the Cx5, but way more fun to drive!
1. What do you mean by this? Try turning the Adaptive Lane Guidance checkbox off, and it won't try to centre as much.
Quote from: Zach on September 04, 2018, 01:39:19 PM
1. What do you mean by this? Try turning the Adaptive Lane Guidance checkbox off, and it won't try to centre as much.
going into long coding with VCDS or with OBDEleven, it's simply a tick box to enable or disable some features.
Quote from: Zach on September 04, 2018, 01:39:19 PM
1. What do you mean by this? Try turning the Adaptive Lane Guidance checkbox off, and it won't try to centre as much.
Yes you can turn it off, but then that defeats the purpose of having it. My comments relate to it not working all the time. I suspect this is due to our poor road marking making it impossible for the cameras to detect the lanes correctly.
Quote from: Trofeo on September 07, 2018, 07:54:13 AM
Yes you can turn it off, but then that defeats the purpose of having it. My comments relate to it not working all the time. I suspect this is due to our poor road marking making it impossible for the cameras to detect the lanes correctly.
this is an identified issue for following lanes in NZ
Quote from: Trofeo on September 07, 2018, 07:54:13 AM
Yes you can turn it off, but then that defeats the purpose of having it. My comments relate to it not working all the time. I suspect this is due to our poor road marking making it impossible for the cameras to detect the lanes correctly.
I encountered this issue during a RS3 test drive, the salesmen had issues trying to get the lane assist to engage on the southern motorway - was told that it would struggle to work if the lanes were not well defined and also relatively new clean paint, faded old paint and broken or ill-defined lines would cause the lane assist to not engage
essentially just more confirmation of our poor roads
Odd to hear the lane assist doesn't work.
I love the lane assist, it works probably about 90% of roads and even locks on to lanes when there is no left-side marking. It's so good, it's made me lazier, when I drive cars without it, it feels odd...
Quote from: slowmo on August 06, 2018, 04:06:05 PM
The R-line?s are great looking cars.
Regarding the left mirror dip on reverse, is your mirror control dial turned to L? The mirror will only dip if you leave the dial on L.
On the Mk6 it needs to be selected in the settings menu. Might be worth checking that