Volkswagen up! GTI
Does hottest up! live up to all the hype?
A LONG time ago, Volkswagen invented the GTI. Since then the rest of the world has done its best to try, and sometimes fail, to catch up. For 2018, however, VW has gone full circle and reinvented the spirit of the original GTI with this car, the all-new up! GTI.
It’s uncanny how similar the up! GTI’S on-paper statistics are to those original Mk1 Golf GTI ones from 1976. It weighs almost exactly the same, at 1,070kg. Its three-cylinder turbo engine produces virtually the same power at 113bhp (but with rather more torque at 200Nm). And so its performance is near identical to the first ever GTI’S with a 0-62mph time of 8.8 seconds and a 126mph top speed.
Even the interior of the up! GTI has been designed to look like a pastiche of the original Golf GTI’S, albeit with a host of contemporary technology.
And the price? Just £13,750 in threedoor trim or £14,150 as a five-door, making the up! GTI seriously competitive beside rivals such as the Abarth 500 and the slower, less well equipped, less talented Renault Twingo GT.
The up! GTI’S centrepiece is its threecylinder engine, which is potent enough to produce a genuinely entertaining level of performance, while at the same time delivering a claimed 50mpg.
VW has pulled all sorts of tricks out of the hat to make the engine feel and sound as sporting as possible, although some of the noise is synthetic.
On the move the results are mostly great, the three-cylinder motor emitting a range of purposeful sounds that make the car feel faster than it actually is; no bad thing for a GTI that’s aimed at a much younger market.
VW has dropped the ride height by 15mm, the springs and dampers are stiffer, the wheels are 17 inches in diameter and made from cast alloy, featuring ‘Brands Hatch’ branding for the UK market, plus the brakes are a touch bigger, with proper ventilated discs at the front. The gearbox is a six-speed manual; like it or not, it’s a well judged decision given the nature of the car and its intended audience.
On the road it all gels to make the GTI properly swift, reasonably well sorted in terms of the car’s ride and handling, and therefore properly entertaining to drive, even if the VW lacks the ultimate fun and power of the Abarth 500.
It sounds like a junior 911 when you rev it hard, but there’s also a surprising amount of acceleration in the lower reaches of the rev range. It pulls well from as little as 2,000rpm, even in fifth, and at 4,000rpm in third it feels brisk.
If anything, the chassis seems a touch soft when you really start to lean on it, while the electric powersteering is a bit short of ultimate feel.
The front brakes started to smoke quite heavily following a committed but no more than two-minute run down a twisty mountain road on our test route. However, so long as you don’t expect too much from it dynamically, the up! GTI is a fun little thing to drive that’s more capable than you might expect, even if it fails to rewrite the headlines in the way the Golf GTI did in 1976.
The cabin is high in quality and equipment, low in unnecessary frills, even if the tartan seats are a touch over the top. Fundamentally there’s just one spec that includes a five-inch colour screen which hooks up to an iphone to deliver Bluetooth phone and audio connectivity, live sat-nav, plus the six-speaker Beats stereo.
There’s as much space in the GTI as in the regular up! models, which means enough room in the front and rear seats for four people, while the boot is a decent size for a supermini, at 251 litres. The car also has 60:40 folding seatbacks.
“The up! GTI is a fun little thing to drive that’s more capable than you might expect”