Golf GTD – A holiday in jo’burg

By Stuart Johnston

Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? “A Holiday in Jo’burg”. But that’s what I ended up doing this festive season past, which seems so distant now. Life got in the way of making  a trip to Vegas or St Moritz, or even Hartebeespoort Dam, come to think of it. So it was Jo’burg and its surrounds for me.

That wasn’t all bad as VWSA had kindly arranged a loan car for me for December. It was going to be an Audi A4, but at the last minute a GTD was decided upon, and this was cool, as the GTD is not that easy a car to analyse, given that it is “almost a GTI”, so more time spent with this latest version of the Golf family would be rewarding.

GTD is like a GTI, except for the engine

The GTD is pretty much a Golf GTI, Iapart from the engine, which runs on low-sulphur diesel instead of high octane petrol. You get the same extremely sporty seats with good side bolstering for fast cornering, and excellent lumbar support, something that has been a feature of Golf seats since the very first front-wheel-drive VW hatch was introduced in Germany, way back in 1974.

Rev counter red-lined at 4 500 rpm

The main difference in the cabin is that the rev counter is red-lined at 4 500 rpm instead of the 6 500 or so of the GTI model. That’s a quick hint to quickly ascertain whether a car is a diesel, by the way. If the red-line is at 5 000 or less, you can be pretty sure it’s a diesel.

The two-litre engine in the GTD produces 130 kW at 3 600 rpm and 350 Nm of torque at 1 500 rpm. Early on in my holiday time with the GTD I realised that, as a device for extracting pure pleasure for sporting motoring, the petrol version is still for me.

Engine not as charismatic

The diesel motor doesn’t  enjoy  the sweet-spinning refinement of the two-litre petrol four found in the GTI, so instead of acting like a boy racer over the hols, I decided to see how little fuel I could use, through the burbs and on the ring road around Joeys.

So I treated the GTD as if it was on an economy run

I found in short shopping trips I had to work quite hard on being light on the throttle to get the consumption needle to get below the 10,0 litre/100 mark. This is because I live in a very hilly part of Randburg, and on short trips you battle to get up into higher gears.

 With the six-speed DSG gearbox, it was best to use the paddle levers to change up as early as possible. This change point coincided with the maximum torque figure of around 1 500 rpm. Anything less and the gearbox wasn’t keen to change up to a taller ratio.

Driving this way became a bit of an obsession as the holidays wore on, and I revelled in the virtually traffic-free-streets of greater Jo’burg. And with some highway running into the mix – I even ventured as far as Centurion! – the overall consumption figure began to pay dividends.

Excellent consumption at 6,4 litres/100 km

When I handed the car back to VWSA early in the New Year, the overall figure read 6,4 litres/100 km, and that figure did, in fact include a few hard-throttle blasts, just to see if I could replicate the old GTI-feeling in this diesel. I thought that was excellent all round.

Understand, it’s not about the quickness of the GTD that makes me have reservations. It is plenty fast enough, with a 0-100 km/h time in the mid-seven-second bracket. It’s more that the engine seems happier, to me,  being used as cruiser, with a strong dollop of overtaking torque on hand any time you need it. Revving it hard doesn’t  in any way approach that good ol’ GTI-feeling.

Suspension set-up too stiff on the GTD

I have remarked before on the suspension set-up, which I feel is stiffer than a standard GTI’s, and for me, not ideal. The diesel car doesn’t have the overall  supple agility that I enjoy in a GTI, in terms of coping with indifferent road surfaces. Oh yes, show the GTD a corner and it is very pointy and firm, but for me, a tad too firm. Part of this is due to the very low profile 40 series tyres fitted, in 225 sizing. I don’t think weight has too much to do with it, although the GTD is reportedly some 27 kg heavier than a standard-spec GTI.

But hey, low consumption has its merits!

So, I battled to achieve the old GTI feeling I love so much in this GTD, but, I have to say,  the Scotsman in me loved the fact that I used so little fuel over the hols. In a petrol equivalent, I reckon I would have used between 9,0 and 10,0 litres/100, as the petrol car is thirstier, and also I would have exploited that performance more often.

Nevertheless, I was left with the usual impression of excellence that any Golf leaves me with. I was sad to see it leave when VWSA collected it, and, of course, this also emphasised the fact that yet another working year had now well-and-truly  begun!