Firstly, welcome to the club. Its a great forum and full of useful advice.
Like you, I came from a line of Scoobs. 96 JDMSTI wagon, 04 WRX SL, 05 STI and lastly an 06 STI. We ran a Golf R at work and now an S3 which replaced it. 2 very similar cars to be honest and very similar to drive. For me the RS is on a different level of fun. When I test drove the RS I smiled from ear to ear as I had finally found something that felt like the scoob. In all honesty, the Golf R is the better daily, especially with DSG. Its more comfortable, and just easier to drive. But for out and out driving and grin factor it doesn’t come close to the RS. Its got a lot of the scoobs traits. A bit noisy, a bit bumpy, and bit lairy but loads of character.
I got a bit dejected a while ago with the RS’s HG issues and all the stuff I kept reading on forums and very nearly sold it. But, there was/is nothing out there that I would change it for, well not that I can afford anyway. So it’s in having its HG done as we speak and having FPM375 fitted.
Steve