New Golf is a looker but what about the inside?
At 43, the Golf GTi looks better than ever and, wow, it’s fast. But why do its brilliant designers give up when they get to the interior?
This week a bloke I know – a man you will definitely have heard of – who lives next door to another bloke you’ll have heard of, sees his next-door neighbour approaching his garden – in a helicopter. The other bloke is in the middle of his stag do but has flown in to check if the first bloke – despite previous protestations about having to get up at stupid o’clock the next day for work – fancies popping over for a mid-stag beer or two. The inference being that, if time really is the issue, he will fly him the 50 yards over the garden fence and back again.
The story goes that the first bloke just about managed, albeit achingly, to resist this most extreme form of temptation and pleasure-bullying, turning in early instead and going to bed just after nine. Had this been 10 years ago, well, let’s not even go there. Besides, not only did I, sorry, he have a radio show to do the next morning, he also had a rather important car to review.
Hail the all-time king of oldschool, cool hot hatches! The invincible Golf GTi – and, oh my, what a cleverly designed car it is. Right up there with the Fiat 500 for best reimagined classic. I don’t think the GTi has ever looked better than it does today. They say that by the age of 50 we humans get the face we deserve. Now it seems the GTi is suggesting this rule may well apply to motor cars. The only caveat being that, at 43 years of age, it’s either arrived there seven years early, or is set to become even more handsome by 2024.
Take the flow of the roofline, for example, and the way it seems to disappear into thin air as it cuts across the horizon. And that sweet behind that looks like it’s being gently patted down into the tarmac by a giant invisible hand. The pinstripe shoulder line that also tapers off into nothing, the single pencil stroke of a supremely confident designer allowing himself to be guided by nothing more than the breath of Mother Nature.
Even something as usually forgettable as the petrol-filler flap is a work of art, so ultimately minimalist but perfectly proportioned and positioned to become a subtle reference point to every signature line from the B pillar to the rear bumper. Pure design genius.
What then of the back of this best-ever looking Golf GTi? Well, here’s the thing. Save for the bazooka-style twin tailpipes, things become much quieter but I interpreted this as entirely intentional. A literal beginning, middle and end in the 2017 GTi director’s cut.
Our epic opens with an explosion of enticement and excitement from the front, followed by a glorious aftershock of energy bisected and deflected gracefully down either wing, before calamity and chaos are nipped in the bud and any potential disaster is averted by the pragmatism and resolve of an everyday hatchback.
So I must be madly in love with this car, right? Well actually no, not at all. Because the other consistent thing about Golf GTis is that they have always been far better-looking on the outside than they have on the inside. And this one is no different. I don’t want to be in it, I just want to stare at it longingly on my drive. Notwithstanding the classic tartan trim and the novelty (almost naff but not quite) golf ball gear knob, the driver is greeted by a heavy wall of dreary black mundanity that stretches from one side of the cabin to the other. This is, for me, a massive turn-off. I don’t get it, I have never got, it and I will never get it.
Why has VW never deigned to bring the magnificence of the GTi’s exterior in from the cold. Surround me with the same promise of infinite joy and expectation once I’m in the car as you seem to find it so effortless to create when I’m standing next to the damn thing. It’s like a low-rent hire car in there.
And while you’re at it, how about reintroducing an old-style pull handbrake into the mix? I lost count of the number of times I mourned its passing while behind the wheel. Which gets us conveniently on to what this supermodel