VW Golf 8.5 GTI: facelifted hot hatch's cabin revealed

Here’s your first official look at the Volkswagen Golf 8.5 GTI’s revised cabin! The facelifted hot hatch will be fully revealed soon, complete with exterior design tweaks…

Yes, the Volkswagen Golf 8.5 GTI will soon be fully revealed. But ahead of this official unveiling, the Wolfsburg-based automaker has released a raft of teaser images hinting at the facelifted hot hatch’s updated exterior styling. There are also a couple of shots showing the model’s subtly revised cabin.

The latter updates are perhaps the most interesting, what with VW boss Thomas Schäfer having earlier admitted many customers didn’t appreciate the fiddly touch controls on the pre-facelift Golf 8 GTI’s steering wheel. So, true to its word, the German firm has used this upcoming mid-cycle update to revert to physical buttons on the tiller.

That said, the official images suggest the Golf 8.5 GTI will stick with the pre-facelift model’s similarly controversial haptic control panel for light and vision functions. In addition, other digitalised controls – including illuminated touch panels and sliders – appear to have been retained. The cabin furthermore gains a new, larger touchscreen system, running software featuring artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT integrated into the voice assistant.

In terms of exterior updates, the camouflaged prototype shown in the teasers suggest the Golf 8.5 GTI will feature revised bumper designs (fore and aft), along with a newly designed grille plus tweaked lighting signatures, front and back.

Volkswagen has yet to release official information on any powertrain upgrades, though the 8.5 generation may well end up being the final combustion-engined Golf GTI. An earlier Autocar report suggested the familiar EA888 turbocharged 2.0-litre, 4-cylinder petrol engine would be “significantly updated for its final years”, with the British publication speculating the hot hatch’s peak outputs could rise from the current 180 kW and 370 Nm to around 195 kW and around 400 Nm.

Such improvements in power and torque would see the front-wheel-drive Golf 8 GTI’s claimed 0-100 kph time fall from the current version’s 6.4 seconds to “below 6.0 seconds”, said Autocar. The 7-speed dual-clutch transmission (branded DSG) seems likely to remain the default choice.

The publication furthermore reported the refreshed Golf 8 GTI would adopt a raft of chassis tweaks, including a stiffer rear-axle carrier (meant to “improve rolling refinement and cornering performance”) and a more advanced version of the Dynamic Chassis Control (DCC) adaptive suspension system, dubbed the “DCC Pro”.

As a reminder, the Golf 8 GTI debuted globally in February 2020, though arrived in South Africa only in September 2021. Look out for the full reveal of the Golf 8.5 GTI in the coming weeks…