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Came across this old review and thought it was worth rehashing as many may not have had the chance to read it.
From The Sunday Times
December 26, 2004
Volkswagen Golf GTI
Drive away those Guardian blues
Jeremy Clarkson
In a recent Guardian article about traffic congestion, it was claimed that if every vehicle in Britain were parked nose to tail, the resultant snake would fill a 12-lane motorway all the way from Birmingham to Beijing. Well I’ve done the maths, and it’s true. But then it’s also true that if you laid all the words in The Guardian’s monstrous 16-page feature end to end, they’d stretch from my desk all the way to the wastepaper bin in the kitchen.
And I don’t see the point, frankly. We know the roads are full of cars in the same way that space is full of stars, and the countryside is full of mud. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it.
Most of the piece was centred around a handful of London dwellers who explained that they spend anything up to four or five hours a day in traffic, which is nearly enough time to get through a Guardian article explaining how long it takes London dwellers to get to work in a morning.
But look. The traffic is very bad in London for two reasons. First of all, this is one of the most wondrous cities in the world, so naturally lots of people want to live there. And second, it’s run by a bunch of Guardianistas who spend the morning reading about traffic congestion and the afternoon making it worse with idiotic parking regulations and traffic-light phasing from chapter one of a book called How To Be a Lunatic.
Who cares, though? People in London have a choice. Obviously they can’t use a bus because, as Margaret Thatcher famously said: “Any man over the age of 30 who finds himself on a bus may count himself a failure.” But they can take a cab, or a train, or the Tube, or a rickshaw, or a horse.
Elsewhere in Britain, however — and contrary to the teachings of The Guardian, most of us do actually live elsewhere in Britain — there is no choice. Take Oxford, for example. Because the local council is obsessed with any form of transport, so long as it isn’t a car, it has created special lanes for just about everything else.
Were the earth to be in the path of a giant meteorite, Oxford’s frizzy-headed burghers would give it priority on the city’s roundabouts on the basis that it wasn’t burning fossil fuels.
So as a result you sit in your car, stationary, watching completely empty buses that no one wants to use making sonic booms as they fly by at twice the speed of sound.
But, as I said, what are we supposed to do about it? Stand as a councillor? You must be joking. Councils are run by people who are useless or mad, and by standing against them you’re demonstrating that you’re rational. Which counts you out. I suppose you could ride into town on a cow — they’d like that — but I think I have a better suggestion. Buy a Golf GTI.
Twenty-five years ago, before the Madness of King Tony descended on the land like a big, itchy blanket, the first Golf GTI was very much the right car at the right time. Engineers and keen drivers will tell you that it was the first car to successfully combine the thrills of a sports car with the practicality of a hatchback, and this was unquestionably true, but there was an important social issue too.
It was launched at pretty well the precise moment when Britain was freed from the shackles of union power and set off on the golden road to the riches we enjoy today. We needed something discreet for those first tentative steps out of the darkness, and the GTI, which was fast,without being flash, ticked all the right boxes. As a result VW sold more GTIs in Britain than anywhere else in the world.
Think of it as a chrysalis. A midpoint between the dreary caterpillar of the 1970s and the flamboyant butterfly bling-ness we see today. It was a great car. In fact, I voted for it as the greatest car of the 20th century.
Sadly, though, over the years the Golf became fat and old to the point where the Mark 4 version was slower from 0 to 60 than the automatic version of Rover’s ancient 25. And the GTI badge lost its magic, too, becoming synonymous with Blackbird Leys and sky-high insurance premiums.
As a result the family looking for a car with a bit of presence went off and bought a big off-roader instead. And the young and single bought a two-seater sports car which, as the hot hatch died, came back to life. Great. But on today’s overcrowded roads neither type of car works terribly well. Which brings us back to the new GTI.
There are those who say the latest version recaptures the magic of the 1976 original, but that’s not true. It’s twice as heavy and twice as luxurious, for a kick-off. It even has power steering, for heaven’s sake. But what it does do, once again, is capture the mood of the moment perfectly.
Let’s be honest, your enormous off-roader may make you feel like the king of the road, but it is hard to park, and you do spend an awful lot of time filling it up with fuel at £70 a pop. And do you need all that space? Really? Because the Golf has five seats as well, you know, which is just as many as you have in your Range Rover or BMW X5.
Then there’s this bothersome footballing business. It may be acceptable for some 20-year-old thicko on £70,000 a week to run around in something vulgar and ostentatious, but do you want people to think you’re Rio Ferdinand? So why have that Bentley Continental then? Because it’s fast? Okay, well I’ll make a bet. You can choose any route, anywhere in Britain, and I’ll cover it at least as quickly in a GTI. I’ll have more fun, too.
And here’s the rub. The Guardian may like us to believe that Britain is completely gridlocked, but it’s not. If I were to leave my house right now I could be doing 100mph in as long as it takes the car to accelerate to that speed.
I am surrounded by hundreds of miles of road that have never seen a traffic jam; roads that are unpoliced and miles from children playing ball. It’s the stuff of car ads round here. It’s wonderful.
Sure, you occasionally encounter a Rover with a Christian fish on the back, doing 16mph, and this is where the torque of the new GTI’s 2 litre engine comes in. You don’t even need to drop out of sixth. Such is the grunt that if you put your foot down the little car can be past the Christian on even the shortest straight.
Then you have the bends. Maybe when it’s greasy there isn’t as much grip from the driven front wheels as you’d expect, but you really have to be flying to notice. And when you are flying, being hugged by quite the most exquisite seats I’ve ever found in a car, you’re having too much fun to care. As a driver’s car, then, the new GTI is just fantastic.
Then you’re in London, where it’s small enough to fit in even the tightest of Soho’s multi-storey car parks. Then you’re on the motorway, where it’s quiet and refined. And then you’re in a jam watching the television, or making calls on the hands-free. And then you’re at the supermarket with the rear seats folded down, jamming a Christmas tree in the back. And then you’re in an accident with airbags leaping out of every flat surface.
As is the way with the old Golf, this new one is never caught out socially, or on the road. It works outside the best restaurant in town and it works when it’s minus seven. It works if you’re a Guardian reader and it works if you take The Times. It’s not chav. It’s not bling. And with prices starting at less than £20,000 it’s not that expensive, either.
It’s hard, really, to think of any car that does anything like as much, anything like as well.
Vital statistics
Model Volkswagen Golf GTI
Engine type Four-cylinder, 1984cc turbo
Power 197bhp @ 5100rpm
Torque 207 lb ft @ 1800rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual front-wheel drive
Fuel 35.3mpg (combined)
CO2 192g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 6.9sec
Top speed 145mph
Price £19,995
Rating 4/5
Verdict Simply the most complete car on the road
Print
From The Sunday Times
December 26, 2004
Volkswagen Golf GTI
Drive away those Guardian blues
Jeremy Clarkson
In a recent Guardian article about traffic congestion, it was claimed that if every vehicle in Britain were parked nose to tail, the resultant snake would fill a 12-lane motorway all the way from Birmingham to Beijing. Well I’ve done the maths, and it’s true. But then it’s also true that if you laid all the words in The Guardian’s monstrous 16-page feature end to end, they’d stretch from my desk all the way to the wastepaper bin in the kitchen.
And I don’t see the point, frankly. We know the roads are full of cars in the same way that space is full of stars, and the countryside is full of mud. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it.
Most of the piece was centred around a handful of London dwellers who explained that they spend anything up to four or five hours a day in traffic, which is nearly enough time to get through a Guardian article explaining how long it takes London dwellers to get to work in a morning.
But look. The traffic is very bad in London for two reasons. First of all, this is one of the most wondrous cities in the world, so naturally lots of people want to live there. And second, it’s run by a bunch of Guardianistas who spend the morning reading about traffic congestion and the afternoon making it worse with idiotic parking regulations and traffic-light phasing from chapter one of a book called How To Be a Lunatic.
Who cares, though? People in London have a choice. Obviously they can’t use a bus because, as Margaret Thatcher famously said: “Any man over the age of 30 who finds himself on a bus may count himself a failure.” But they can take a cab, or a train, or the Tube, or a rickshaw, or a horse.
Elsewhere in Britain, however — and contrary to the teachings of The Guardian, most of us do actually live elsewhere in Britain — there is no choice. Take Oxford, for example. Because the local council is obsessed with any form of transport, so long as it isn’t a car, it has created special lanes for just about everything else.
Were the earth to be in the path of a giant meteorite, Oxford’s frizzy-headed burghers would give it priority on the city’s roundabouts on the basis that it wasn’t burning fossil fuels.
So as a result you sit in your car, stationary, watching completely empty buses that no one wants to use making sonic booms as they fly by at twice the speed of sound.
But, as I said, what are we supposed to do about it? Stand as a councillor? You must be joking. Councils are run by people who are useless or mad, and by standing against them you’re demonstrating that you’re rational. Which counts you out. I suppose you could ride into town on a cow — they’d like that — but I think I have a better suggestion. Buy a Golf GTI.
Twenty-five years ago, before the Madness of King Tony descended on the land like a big, itchy blanket, the first Golf GTI was very much the right car at the right time. Engineers and keen drivers will tell you that it was the first car to successfully combine the thrills of a sports car with the practicality of a hatchback, and this was unquestionably true, but there was an important social issue too.
It was launched at pretty well the precise moment when Britain was freed from the shackles of union power and set off on the golden road to the riches we enjoy today. We needed something discreet for those first tentative steps out of the darkness, and the GTI, which was fast,without being flash, ticked all the right boxes. As a result VW sold more GTIs in Britain than anywhere else in the world.
Think of it as a chrysalis. A midpoint between the dreary caterpillar of the 1970s and the flamboyant butterfly bling-ness we see today. It was a great car. In fact, I voted for it as the greatest car of the 20th century.
Sadly, though, over the years the Golf became fat and old to the point where the Mark 4 version was slower from 0 to 60 than the automatic version of Rover’s ancient 25. And the GTI badge lost its magic, too, becoming synonymous with Blackbird Leys and sky-high insurance premiums.
As a result the family looking for a car with a bit of presence went off and bought a big off-roader instead. And the young and single bought a two-seater sports car which, as the hot hatch died, came back to life. Great. But on today’s overcrowded roads neither type of car works terribly well. Which brings us back to the new GTI.
There are those who say the latest version recaptures the magic of the 1976 original, but that’s not true. It’s twice as heavy and twice as luxurious, for a kick-off. It even has power steering, for heaven’s sake. But what it does do, once again, is capture the mood of the moment perfectly.
Let’s be honest, your enormous off-roader may make you feel like the king of the road, but it is hard to park, and you do spend an awful lot of time filling it up with fuel at £70 a pop. And do you need all that space? Really? Because the Golf has five seats as well, you know, which is just as many as you have in your Range Rover or BMW X5.
Then there’s this bothersome footballing business. It may be acceptable for some 20-year-old thicko on £70,000 a week to run around in something vulgar and ostentatious, but do you want people to think you’re Rio Ferdinand? So why have that Bentley Continental then? Because it’s fast? Okay, well I’ll make a bet. You can choose any route, anywhere in Britain, and I’ll cover it at least as quickly in a GTI. I’ll have more fun, too.
And here’s the rub. The Guardian may like us to believe that Britain is completely gridlocked, but it’s not. If I were to leave my house right now I could be doing 100mph in as long as it takes the car to accelerate to that speed.
I am surrounded by hundreds of miles of road that have never seen a traffic jam; roads that are unpoliced and miles from children playing ball. It’s the stuff of car ads round here. It’s wonderful.
Sure, you occasionally encounter a Rover with a Christian fish on the back, doing 16mph, and this is where the torque of the new GTI’s 2 litre engine comes in. You don’t even need to drop out of sixth. Such is the grunt that if you put your foot down the little car can be past the Christian on even the shortest straight.
Then you have the bends. Maybe when it’s greasy there isn’t as much grip from the driven front wheels as you’d expect, but you really have to be flying to notice. And when you are flying, being hugged by quite the most exquisite seats I’ve ever found in a car, you’re having too much fun to care. As a driver’s car, then, the new GTI is just fantastic.
Then you’re in London, where it’s small enough to fit in even the tightest of Soho’s multi-storey car parks. Then you’re on the motorway, where it’s quiet and refined. And then you’re in a jam watching the television, or making calls on the hands-free. And then you’re at the supermarket with the rear seats folded down, jamming a Christmas tree in the back. And then you’re in an accident with airbags leaping out of every flat surface.
As is the way with the old Golf, this new one is never caught out socially, or on the road. It works outside the best restaurant in town and it works when it’s minus seven. It works if you’re a Guardian reader and it works if you take The Times. It’s not chav. It’s not bling. And with prices starting at less than £20,000 it’s not that expensive, either.
It’s hard, really, to think of any car that does anything like as much, anything like as well.
Vital statistics
Model Volkswagen Golf GTI
Engine type Four-cylinder, 1984cc turbo
Power 197bhp @ 5100rpm
Torque 207 lb ft @ 1800rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual front-wheel drive
Fuel 35.3mpg (combined)
CO2 192g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 6.9sec
Top speed 145mph
Price £19,995
Rating 4/5
Verdict Simply the most complete car on the road
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