13 Jul 05
By contrast, the Golf, though nothing like as entertaining on the track and notably slower cross-country, would soothe and cosset you 99 percent of the time when the roads of your dreams are not laid out in front of you. This verdict is exactly what my predecessors were saying when the Golf and Astra squared up to each other when I was a callow, zit-encrusted Metro-driving teenager; it's taken 20 years but we appear to have come full circle.
Or have we? The circle, you may have spotted, is not yet complete. We are missing a member of the original trinity and we won't see it until the end of the year. But the Ford Focus ST should be worth the wait. With a 220bhp engine splitting exactly the power outputs of the Golf and Astra, it will be aiming to provide VXR levels of excitement with GTI-style refinement. And with a five-cylinder engine and the well-documented skills of Ford's RS tuning department at its disposal, I will personally eat this computer if it's not a worthy competitor and better now, I suspect, than the always slightly disappointing XR3i was then.
But until the Focus arrives, there's still a Golf and Astra to choose between. Me? I'd rather drive the Vauxhall and live with the VW. But it's hard to see how any true hot hatch enthusiast could be less than delighted by either. And that, of course, is the best news of all.
