Volkswagen Arteon R Shooting Brake Fast Fleet test – 5000 miles in the 316bhp estate

When our Arteon R Shooting Brake arrived in November last year I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the key. I’d run our previous Arteon Shooting Brake, a 187bhp, 2-litre petrol R-Line, and while I was a fan, I felt it lacked that bit of excitement and bite that would have made it the perfect car for my varied needs. Having also spent time in a Mk7.5 Golf R in the past, the thought of a ‘sort of estate’ version of that car, but a bit bigger, was my blueprint for all-round perfection. 

Happily for me, our Arteon R didn’t disappoint. On school runs and motorway slogs it performed exactly as I had hoped. On photoshoots near our Bedfordshire office, where it served as a camera car on a number of occasions, it more than held its own, too. It’s been well documented in these pages that the roads in and around this county are far from ideal, boasting surfaces that only the moon could be proud of, but KY71 HMG took on their challenges with ease, potholes and other imperfections proving to be nowhere near the nuisance they can be in some of our other long-termers. For this we could thank the Arteon’s relatively modest (given the size of the car) 19-inch wheels, matched with 40-profile tyres and standard adaptive dampers.

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My route to evo Towers takes in some good twisting B-roads and some great isolated straights, giving plenty of opportunities to enjoy the 316bhp, four-wheel-drive R’s ample performance. Unleashing my inner Marty McFly at traffic lights by putting the car’s standing-start acceleration to the test also never became tiresome; VW’s claim of 4.9sec to 62mph seemed entirely believable, as the baffled SUV owners it frequently left in its wake will confirm.

It was this combination of talents that meant I genuinely always looked forward to driving the Arteon. All good then? Well, not quite. In issue 309 it was put up against two estate rivals, the BMW M340i xDrive Touring and Peugeot 508 SW PSE, and John Barker was less than impressed by the VW, concluding that it was ‘not engaging, exciting or desirable’. Jumping into the BMW and Peugeot to get some context for myself, I had to reluctantly agree that there are better circa-£60k estates when it comes to the driving experience.

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For looks, however, I’d take the Arteon. To my eyes it has more ‘wow’ factor overall, and I’m certainly not alone in admiring its design: I lost count of the number of positive comments our long-termer received. Pretty remarkable for an estate car.

It did have its niggles, though. It lost some coolant early on during our loan, but that issue mysteriously resolved itself after a refill. The infotainment system had a few crashes too, which is a problem we’ve encountered in other recent VW Group cars. It always rectified itself after everything was powered down for a few hours, but it was annoying when a glitch cut short a Mark King bass solo nonetheless. Beyond these concerns, however, our time with KY17 went smoothly.

It seemed fitting that our Arteon’s last week with us should include a trackday at Brands Hatch, a 500-mile round trip to pick up my daughter from university, and the transportation of 300kg of bathroom tiles (in three loads), confirming that if you are after a workhorse family car with hints of Golf R performance, this is very much your horse. When the day came to finally hand it back, I knew instantly that I would miss it. Despite what JB thinks of it…

This story was first featured in evo issue 311.