13 Jul 05
Twenty years ago, the hot hatchback was in its pomp. At the entry level, brilliant little French buzz-boxes like the Renault 5 GT Turbo and Peugeot 205 GTI were fun before they fell to pieces but the real slugging match was always between VW, Ford and Vauxhall. If you were a teenager back then, clutching your freshly printed driving licence, the aspirational cars were not Capris and Mantas but Golf GTIs, Escort XR3is and Astra GTEs. I can remember as if it were this morning driving my Metro to a Vauxhall dealer and persuading some bored salesman to let me drive their GTE. Utterly unattainable, the experience left me depressed for weeks.
Then, as we know, hatches got hotter and hotter until so many were either crashed or nicked they became uninsurable and about as popular as measles. And ever since, these cars, which are better conceived to look after the day-to-day needs of the typical motoring enthusiast more than any other genre, have struggled to regain their form. There's been the occasional great - the Honda Civic Type-R and Focus RS to name two of the more recent examples - but nothing until now to suggest a sustained renaissance where it's needed most: among those cars that defined the breed all those years ago.
But now I think we may just be on the verge of one. You don't need me to tell you how good the new Golf GTI is. I've whinged for over a decade about how long this once fabled brand has been sold down the river by VW's marketing department but, having driven the latest GTI, I forgive them everything. The Golf GTi is everything the old one was - fast, fun and forgiving - but it's also a superbly civilised thing with which to live. Something, with the best will in the world, you'd not have been tempted to say about my beloved Mk1 version.
