Hanging out with a legend

LIKE THE FERRARI AND LAMBORGHINI, THE GOLF GTI LIVES UP TO ITS REPUTATION After automotive freshen-up and some aesthetic tweaks, the VW classic is a treat.

There’s a belief that meeting a “living legend” often ends up being a disappointment: the person you worshipped from afar turns out to be less than wonderful in the flesh.

But that’s never been my experience, limited though it is.

The first was when I was a baby reporter and the boss had heard Oscar-winner Jane Fonda was in SA. I was dispatched to find her and interview her. I can’t remember how I pulled it off but I spent an entire afternoon with her.

Even though she was a good 20 or more years older than me, I was mesmerised. Classic beauty will always do that to you.

A decade later, not long after Nelson Mandela was released from prison, I managed to secure a “one-on-one” interview with him in his surprisingly bare office on the upper floors of what is now known as Luthuli House in Joburg. He was even more riveting in person than I thought he would be. In a plain brown suit, white shirt and checked tie (he always looked uncomfortable in suits), he had a magnetism I have seldom found in a human being. It went beyond his history, beyond what he was saying. He knew how to play his audience (me) but I didn’t care: How many of you have been addressed by Nelson Mandela using your first name?

When it comes to cars, the living legend experience has been very similar for me. My first (and only, so far) Ferrari – the F355F1 – had the finest sound of any car I’ve driven, and its 9 000rpm redline V8 engine made it feel like a barely civilised Formula One for the road.

A collector’s Lamborghini Countach 5000S also enchanted when I drove it briefly: who cares that you have to be a contortionist to get in and out of a fibre-glass car that looks and feels like a kit car, when you have that glorious V12 engine screaming behind you?

So, I was not expecting disappointment from one of the other classic performance cars of all time, the Volkswagen Golf GTI.

It’s just been given another little automotive freshen-up, with some tweaks to the looks (which are still about evolution, not revolution) and an extra 9kW of power squeezed out of the two-litre turbo engine. Even sitting there in the parking bay, locked and quiet, the GTI exudes a laid-back, sexy power. You know that this is no poser-mobile.

Against the computerised GPS timing system, my motoring colleague, Mark Jones, managed to extract a 0-100km/h of 6.58 seconds… a time which would have made that Countach driver cry in shame back in the early 1980s.

I never got close to Mark’s benchmark because I prefer to use power in small squirts – as when needing to teach upstarts in homemade “hot” Corsas a lesson in physics and German engineering when launching from a traffic light. But this Golf really goes.

The twin-clutch DSG gearbox in the GTI (there is no longer a manual option) plays a major role in the excellent acceleration times because its gear changes are lightning fast. The GTI might go even quicker if it didn’t wheelspin quite so much under full throttle.

Handling has always been a Golf, and VW, strong suit. I realised that for the first time 20 years ago when I bought a Jetta after an unlamented Opel Kadett. The VW felt like a sports car, compared to the Opel, in the way it changed direction and held the road.

The dynamic properties of the new Golf GTI are a given, but the pleasure of sitting behind the leather-clad steering wheel, looking at the clever “virtual cockpit” (a R7 000 extra) ahead of you cannot be measured. You know that the people who put this together not only know what they’re doing, they love what they’re doing.

The best thing is that, if you feel like being pedestrianly suburban, you can. There’s plenty of legroom in the back for adults, as well as a decent-sized boot. And it’s easy to drive in a lazy way.

Acquiring a legend isn’t cheap. The list price for the GTI is R545 800, without any extras. Not entirely VW’s fault either: junk status and a weak rand play a huge role when it comes to imports.

The best thing about spending time with a legend like the Golf is that you feel a glow for a long time afterwards. Pretty much like I remember that afternoon 30 years ago with Jane Fonda…

Acquiring a legend these days, though, is not cheap. The list price for the GTI is R545 800… and that’s without any extras.