POWER TO THE PEOPLE
After spending a couple of days with the fast, fun and functional Golf GTI, Jon Wall reckons Volkswagen’s bestselling hot hatch might well be the ultimate car-in-one
Some readers might be wondering why I’ve only got around to driving the current Volkswagen Golf
gti – a vehicle that’s been on the road for at least five years – only now. Others might query why, when generally these pages are devoted to Ferraris, Lambos, Mclarens and Rollers, I’m stooping so low as to drive a humble “People’s Car”.
To the former, I’d simply say that the fallow period between New Year and the spate of launches triggered by the Geneva motor show in early March offers an ideal opportunity to catch up on the cars we’d always wanted to play with but for one reason or another had never quite managed to. And to the latter, I’d argue that the Golf – and in particular, the blue-chip gti variant – has rightly become such an icon among automobiles since its introduction some 45 years ago that it would be remiss for me to ignore it.
Now well into its seventh generation (the mid-life 7.5 iteration appeared a couple of years back), vw’s first properly modern car was so perfectly judged on its launch in the mid-70s that it kick-started a trend and was then adopted as the yardstick by which all other such vehicles were judged. Although it self-evidently shares the same lineage, today’s Golf is a vastly different beast, longer by around half a metre, more than 500kg heavier and in every respect way more sophisticated. And yet nothing has really changed. vw’s top seller is still the small family car that everyone wants to buy and every other manufacturer is trying desperately to bury.
Just as the Golf came to define the practical small saloon, its performance-oriented gti sibling, which arrived in 1975 boasting a 110bhp, fuel-injected engine (at the time almost unheard of in small cars), cracking handling and grip to match, immediately became the poster child for a new class of automobile, the hot hatchback. Since then – and in spite of piling on the weight, the addition of rear doors and some fierce competition – the gti has held on as the gold standard for pocket rockets, partly because of its dynamic qualities but as much because it has evolved into a premium piece of kit – one of the few cars, in fact, that can convincingly straddle the polar opposites of mass and class.
The Golf gti Classic whose key I’ve been handed does exactly that. Although I could likely draw its shape from memory, it nonetheless oozes distinction and desirability, from the Deep Black Pearl – a darkly lustrous metallic paint that under blue skies displays a rich oceanic undertone – in which it’s wrapped and the red pinstripe that underlines the front lights and grille, to the pair of chrome-tipped pipes that