Wow, this topic is growing fast!
Anyway, in general I believe in going softer rather than harder with springs for tuning a car's handling. All things being equal, I truly believe the secret lies in better dampers. Given ideal track conditions, it will be much easier to just dial up the springs to make a car handle well, but this is to be expected because the car experiences much smaller geometry changes and the behaviour of the car is much more predictable. Depending on who you talk to, the car could be perceived as easier to drive or harder to drive because the more stiffly sprung setup will make the car always feel "on edge" and less forgiving, but gives sharp handling at the same time.
As far as VWs go, I began in my early days with driving on a setup with almost no suspension (riding on bump stop rubber 24/7), to a KW V2 coilover setup, to my current Koni FSDs, and I can unequivocally say that the Koni FSDs (albeit a relatively "tame" setup) are not only more comfortable and compliant, but also allows me to drive the car much faster 90% of the time with much more ease than the KW setup. I also come across various cars every week for evaluation purposes, which continues to help establish my shifting baseline of vehicle handling.
Several months ago, I had some indirect experience as a passenger in a McLaren MP4-12C through some high speed driving. This car has no traditional torsional swaybars, and has instead an intricately routed system of hydraulic lines interconnecting the four dampers that allows maximum compliance with the road while maintaining a flat, easy-to-control ride throughout. I am not sure about the spring rates, but I believe they are relatively soft as the driver purposely drove over various potholes and the car successfully remained essentially undisturbed, with only the suspension doing its job. There is a certain fluidity to the setup that makes the ride
more comfortable than even our Mk5 stock, without any of the ride harshness experienced in many typical cars. I am sure the unique suspension setup is only part of the equation, but there are alot of great concepts from its setup that to directly draw upon- the most basic being the maximum independence of the inner and outer wheels and adaptive dampers that takes handling to another level. Through heavy braking, on-throttle acceleration, and combined high speed acceleration/cornering, the tires never once gave out. Truly breathtaking!
But I will say this - TheBruce is right. There is no absolute objectivity. Whichever setup the driver is most comfortable with going 10/10ths will be the "best" one, since the handling of our cars, as it presents itself to us, may not be its true behaviour due to our perceptions of the setup, our ability to exploit the car's handling at the limit, and lastly, our ability to adapt to any of the car's shortcomings.
