TRUE GR EATNESS
In CAR’s recent essay on the end of engines, fellow contributor Sam Smith wrote that ‘progress is rarely kind to the romantic’. I think he’s only partly right. Progress may kill off the simplest, sweetest, most natural cars, or render their best features unrepeatable. But once made, those cars remain out there, and it’s often only later, once their modern successors have been legislated into ever-increasing weight and complexity, that we see the value of models that looked or felt a bit compromised or odd when launched.
That’s true here. Our five historic hatches were all well-received at the time, and a couple at least have already ascended to greatest-of-all-time status. And yet they keep getting better with age, and will again when combustion engines can finally no longer be sold. If, in advance of that shift, you want to buy a manual, internal-combustion performance car to use alongside your Leaf or your Tesla, you wouldn’t go wrong with any of these. I can’t believe how affordable some of them are for what they provide. And they won’t get any cheaper once combustion engines have stopped being made.
So, rather than making excuses for the older cars here, it’s the other way around. The newer cars can’t match the dynamic advantages of a 32-yearold car that weighs 880kg. So the 205 remains our favourite benchmark. The newer cars are forced to compensate for their mass with ever more power and tech, and it’s notable how true steering feel has declined with the hot hatch’s evolution. That’s not to say that it’s impossible to make a good hot hatch now: we just have to look beyond the simplicity, feedback and only suciently swollen power that marked the best old ones.
The GR Yaris is a great hot hatch, and still our current favourite, despite Hyundai’s impressive effort. Between the Hyundai and the Ford it’s a tougher call. The Hyundai gets so much right, and echoes so much of what makes the five old cars great. It might also objectively have a better chassis than the Fiesta. But the Fiesta has a simplicity, an honesty and a sense of engagement that the Hyundai lacks. The ST also has the better engine, its triple being more characterful than the Hyundai’s four.
So, the Ford heads the Hyundai by a nose. But in truth, in a few years’ time, when hot hatches look very different – if they’re sold at all – you’ll be glad you bought either, to sit alongside your GR Yaris and your 205.
What’s important is the WRC chassis which has crawled up inside the Yaris like a hermit crab