- A refreshed version of the VW Golf GTI is arriving for 2025, and here’s our first look at the Europe-spec version.
- It has a bit of extra power from its turbo 2.0-liter engine, plus exterior and interior tweaks.
- U.S. specs aren’t available yet, but we’ll find out more later this year.
Just weeks after teasing the updated 2025 Volkswagen Golf GTI at CES, VW is pulling the wraps off the real thing. Here now is the facelifted hot hatchback in all its glory, complete with numerous upgrades including a freshened look, a bit more horsepower, newly available colors, and several interior tech upgrades meant to address the outgoing Golf’s frustrating infotainment interface.
The turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four gets a useful boost to 262 horsepower, at least for the Europe-spec car pictured here. The U.S. model’s output might be slightly different, but rest assured that it will be more than the current car’s 241 hp. That extra grunt will soften the blow from the disappearance of the six-speed manual transmission, which is no longer part of the lineup. A seven-speed dual-clutch is now the only transmission choice, so act fast if you want one of the last stick-shift 2024 GTI models.
You’ll have to look closely to spot the differences to the front bumper and the LED headlights and taillights, but the new GTI does look a bit more modern than before. There are also new wheel designs, a newly available black-painted roof, and four new exterior colors—two blues, a silver, and a black—to add visual interest. A light-up VW badge is offered as a new option.
We’re looking forward to trying out the GTI’s upgraded interior, which does away with some of the annoying touch-sensitive controls from before and purports to improve the infotainment interface. The steering wheel now has real buttons instead of touch-capacitive ones, and while the touch sliders on the central screen that adjust volume and temperature remain, they’re at least now illuminated and supposedly easier to use. The screen itself is now a 12.9-inch unit using VW’s latest MIB4 software, which has a new menu structure. There’s also a new voice assistant function that recognizes more commands.
Look for more specific U.S. information to come later this year as VW prepares to introduce the refreshed Golf GTI on our shores. VW confirmed that the all-wheel-drive Golf R will stick around in America, too, but we haven’t yet seen the updates that are in store for that model.
Despite being raised on a steady diet of base-model Hondas and Toyotas—or perhaps because of it—Joey Capparella nonetheless cultivated an obsession for the automotive industry throughout his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee. He found a way to write about cars for the school newspaper during his college years at Rice University, which eventually led him to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for his first professional auto-writing gig at Automobile Magazine. He has been part of the Car and Driver team since 2016 and now lives in New York City.