VW ID7 GTX Review: An Old-School Sports Saloon For The EV Age

Once upon a time, there was a certain class of car that doesn’t really exist anymore – the sports-but-not-quite-super-saloon. 20 or so years ago, these were everywhere, from the superb all-rounder Ford Mondeo ST220 to the Vauxhall Vectra VXR that probably understeered into your front garden on a January night in 2007. VW had one too, the all-wheel drive Passat R36.

The general death of the traditional saloon has seen most of these cars die out. But wait! Saloons are easy to make aerodynamic, which means they’re having a bit of a renaissance as electric cars.

Buying into this is VW, which only sells one saloon in Europe these days – the all-electric ID7 (although technically, it’s a style- and aero-conscious fastback, and you can get an estate too). What’s more, it’s brought us a spiritual successor to the Passat R36, as long as you don’t baulk too much at its lusty V6 being replaced by the sci-fi whirr of electric motors – the ID7 GTX.

Power comes from the same dual-motor setup also used in GTX versions of IDs 4, 5 and Buzz. It makes 335bhp and 402lb ft, good for 0-62mph in a quoted 5.4 seconds, while top speed is 112mph. The usual disclosure about this disappointing-sounding top end being pretty standard for an EV goes here.

That spritely acceleration happens in the usual powerful EV fashion, a neck-spraining wallop from a standstill followed by a steady but undramatic shove. Really, all these fast-ish EVs feel so similar in the way they move off from a standstill that it’s quite hard to find new ways of describing it.

Luckily, where the ID7 GTX has a bit more personality is in the corners. The actual setup isn’t wildly different from the regular ID7, but the addition of a front motor means it has absolute bags of grip, and will hold its line gamely through a corner.

There’s not much body roll, either, all of which means it never truly feels like the massively heavy car it is – 2328kg unladen, and a gross weight of 2790kg. Sure, it doesn’t go around corners like a Golf GTI Clubsport, but it’s nonetheless impressive, assured and deeply effective if you’re cracking on along a nice A-road. This is also aided by steering, which, while a little odd and glassy immediately off-centre, is overall well-weighted and confidence-inspiring.

One of our biggest gripes with another of VW’s GTX models, the ID3, as well as its Cupra Born VZ sibling, is the squidgy brake pedal, but there’s none of that here. Obviously, the brakes do need to work hard to bring almost 2.8 tonnes of speeding Electro-Passat down to a cornering-appropriate velocity, but you can generally approach bends with much more confidence.

It soaks up bumps and ruts with aplomb at high speeds, too, something that’s once again no guarantee given its moon-like mass. It’s best thought of not as a highly dialled-in super saloon, but something like an electric Audi S5 – grippy, composed and packed with lots of all-weather pace, if ultimately not hugely pulse-raising to drive.

If you’re just going about your business normally, the ID7 is a hugely pleasant place to spend time. We’ve already reviewed the regular ID7, so we won’t bore you with too much on the interior here, but suffice to say, it’s all of a good quality and hugely spacious, and the GTX-specific sports seats up front are very nice.

VW’s infotainment system has been much improved of late, too, although there is one major grumble with the ID7 in particular. Whoever decided that adjusting the direction of the front air vents via dragging a slider around on the touchscreen really needs to take a good, long look in the mirror. I realise VW isn’t the only offender here, but it’s such a spectacular lapse in common sense that you really have to wonder how this idea ever got past anyone’s drawing board, let alone one within the once staunchly sensible walls of Wolfsburg.

Because it’s got two motors working away, the GTX’s official efficiency figure is a not-all-that-impressive 3.8 miles per kWh – the longer-range single-motor versions do a quoted 4.5. The good news, though, is that if you’re being reasonably sensible, something not a million miles away from that is decently attainable. The official range figure is 365 miles, and in reality, you don’t have to work too hard to close in on 300 miles from a charge.

That’s partly because the ID7 is as slippery as a greased trout, with a drag coefficient of just 0.23. This also helps do away with a lot of the wind noise you get at motorway speeds in boxier EVs, one of many things that makes it an amenable cruiser. It’s very good at being unruffled by nasty road surfaces, too, not always a guarantee in these heavy old beasts.

It’s clear that as an overall package, the ID7 is the most polished of all the IDs yet, ironing out a lot of the family’s early glitches and clawing back some of that inherent Volkswagen-ness they were lacking (although a bit more of that old-school VW attention to detail wouldn’t go amiss in the interior). Besides the utterly loveable Buzz, it’s probably the most appealing of the family, too.

The GTX version doesn’t feel like a token performance inclusion either – again, it’s no sports car killer, but its direct, weighty steering and decent brakes instil you with a genuine confidence that lots of similarly sized, similarly powerful EVs don’t.

It ain’t cheap, mind you – GTX pricing kicks off at £62,010, and when a significantly more powerful (albeit smaller) Tesla Model 3 Performance starts at under £60k, it has to be worth a look, regardless of your thoughts on certain people whose names begin with ‘E’ and end with ‘lon Musk’. And if the Tesla badge has become untenable for you, the Hyundai Ioniq 6 has just had a facelift and gained a semi-sporty N Line trim – that’ll be an interesting twin test.

Despite this, the ID7 GTX is a superbly rounded EV – decent to drive, quiet, comfy and enormously spacious, and easy enough to live with. It may not have the emotional appeal of those meaty V6-powered sports saloons of old, but as an update of that concept for the age of the EV, it’s very convincing.