Brendan Seery

IT WAS almost exactly 13 years ago, when we started this page in the Saturday Star, that I had my first taste of raw power and performance.

In 2.0 litre turbocharged form, the Subaru WRX STI’s engine produced 195kW, which was transferred to the tarmac via symmetrical all-wheel drive.

The fierce acceleration (it is still one of the quickest production Subarus) scared the living daylights out of me. That I did not launch myself into eternity that day on the sweeping roads around Sabie, in Mpumalanga, was probably because of my wife’s screams…

Recently, I had another 195kW 2.0 litre turbo under my hands and the experience couldn’t have been more different.

Whereas the gold-wheeled, huge-winged Subaru was a fire-breathing, punishing rally silhouette car, the new Volkswagen Golf GTI Clubsport was a gentleman’s express, not much slower than the STI of yore… but much, much more sophisticated.

The Golf firmly cemented its place at the top, or near the top, of the front-wheel-drive Hot Hatch league. My colleagues on Star Motoring have, in fact, had no faster two-wheel-drive in their years of testing cars over the quarter-mile sprint at the Gerotek test track outside Pretoria. The Clubsport scorched to a 13.9-second time over the quarter mile.

To put that into perspective for those not so familiar with the numbers, the Golf ’s time was identical to that of the tyreshredding 368kW Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG, the Bentley GTC and the BMW M3 (previous generation, naturally aspirated V8). The VW was ahead of the latest Subaru STI, as well as the 5.0 litre V8 Ford