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Do you know what? I really didn't want to like the Golf R. Why would you want to spend €50,000 on a dicreet Golf that has 70 more horsepower than the €36,000 GTi?

Yes, this is an enormous amount of money to spend on a Volkswagen Golf, which most people will barely look twice at on the street. But the thing is, that this is perhaps the beauty of this car. It is wonderful because of its discretion. Around town the DSG transmission is a breeze and on the motorway, if you want to…

We got the new Ford Focus together with its arch rival, the Volkswagen Golf for a brief twin test. In summary, the Focus is more daring in terms of styling inside and out and it's marginally better to drive. That latter point really depends on what version you're looking at though, as the Zetec models feature sportier suspension settings than the rest of the line-up.

The Focus' interior has moved on a lot in terms of quality, though it's a little overstyled in my opinion. The Golf's is simpler and some might say boring,…

We've got hold of a Volkswagen Golf for a few months to live with it every day. In some ways it's a more realistic test of a car than our usual week-long loans. Paddy will be the 'owner' of the car most of the time, but I'll be getting behind the wheel regularly too to give a second opinion.

Our car is the BlueMotion model, which is the most fuel efficient Golf available. It's not difficult to spot some of the modifications made in the name of efficiency. It sits lower for a start…

Alright, I admit that winter tyres may not have been necessary as yet, though I did feel vilified in having them fitted to our long term test Golf when the temperature plummeted to zero in the middle of December. Then it decided to come back up to a balmier 14 degrees around Christmas Day...

Still, it's only the first week of January and many are predicting cold weather and snow for later this month.

However, I'm not as ready as I was, as one of the tyres suffered a puncture before the holidays. Annoyingly,…

We regularly bang on about winter tyres and their merits so we've put our money where our mouths are this year and fitted a set of Bridgestone winter rubber to all four wheels of the CompleteCar.ie Golf BlueMotion. It gave us an excuse to have the car cleaned again too. It's so easy to take one of the few permanent cars in the household for granted when there are so many shiny new models passing through our hands.

Have to admit that the clean has really brought up the paintwork and though the Golf…

When advising buyers what car to go for, one of the first things we ask them is how they'll use it. While Irish drivers are obsessed with diesel power at the moment, petrol cars can make sense depending on your circumstances, especially if you're going for a small car and you don't plan on astronomical annual mileages. Likewise, petrol-electric hybrids are suited more to a city life than one in which you pound the motorways.

So, where does our Golf BlueMotion fit in? Well, in truth, it's driven in and around Dublin city the…

There's no doubt that, if fuel economy is your top priority and you're a high-mileage driver, then the BlueMotion version of the Golf is the car for you. The official combined consumption figure is 3.8 litres/100km (74.3mpg) and it gets pretty close to that. We're consistently amazed by its ability to avoid fill-ups, even when confined to the environs of Dublin. On the motorway it's peerless.

Though it's not quite peerless, as Volkswagen offers the same 1.6-litre TDI engine in the rest of the Golf range. Sure, you do without a list of further…

While enthusiasts' desires are tempered a bit right now by economic reality, there are still some fabulous performance cars on the market. Irish buyers tend to veer toward hot hatches, as they're relatively affordable and practical despite giant-slaying performance. Once upon a time all hot hatches were comparable, but now there's a range of options, from the likes of the warm (but still great) Suzuki Swift Sport to the bonkers stuff like Ford's Focus RS and the new Audi RS 3.

Then there's the Volkswagen Golf R. It doesn't immediately stand out, despite the…

Hyundai's assault on the new car market has gathered pace and the Korean brand's renaissance has meant that the firm looks set to become a top-five seller by 2013. Back in 2007 Hyundai had 3.67 per cent market share but was mainly selling Santa Fes and Tuscon SUVs, with its more mainstream models not really making much of a dent against the heavy-hitters of Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen.

Hyundai Veloster: on sale in January

Both fast-forward to 2011 and the brand has reinvented itself and with the arrival of the i40 Tourer and i40…

I had the lovely new Audi A6 on test last week. Cracking car. It was the 2.0 TDI model, which will undoubtedly be the biggest seller here and it's a decent alternative to the BMW 520d.

Anyway, I drove it to Ennis to the in-laws and got their point of view. Their opinions matter for several reasons (not just because I have to be nice to them...). First up, my brother-in-law drives the previous generation Audi A6 (see below in the background).

Naturally he loved the new car. A few things he noticed in…

Having spent several months at the wheel of the Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion, and then with the Golf Edition-R, it's time to move on. Our next long term test car will be a SEAT Exeo, but before that arrives we have the recently updated Volkswagen Touran for a few weeks. You can read our full road test of the Touran here, and we're going to take this opportunity to compare it to living with a Golf. We suspect that's a decision some growing families will have to make.

First up, and despite cosmetic revisions at…

Recent research commissioned by tyre specialists Kwik Fit has shown that more than half of motorists could not change their own wheel if they got a puncture.

Of those surveyed, 36 per cent of respondents said they had both the spare wheel and the tools required to change a flat tyre but not the knowledge. A further 10 per cent carry the spare but not the tools, while six per cent had neither the equipment nor the knowledge to make a swap. Most worryingly, three per cent, or roughly 54,000 motorists, had no kind of provision in place.