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0
Handling
4
Performance
Usability
5
Feelgood factor
Readers' rating
3.5
By Anthony ffrench-Constant
First Drives
24 May 2012 16:41
‘JESUS CHRIST… WHAT THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU DOING?’ yelled the missus as we gleefully fled the gloriously under-briefed baby sitter the other evening… Mea culpa; the last time I drove the VW Golf GTI 35 was in hot pursuit of Ben P on our performance hatch group test in northern Welsh Wales and, momentarily undeterred by the olfactory tsunami of Issey Miyake A Scent wafting in from the passenger seat, I instinctively carried on where I had left off… Schoolboy error.
Sorry, can’t help myself in the Golf GTI 35; it really is more fun than a clown on fire. And that, given that they say you should never go back (although I suspect whoever coined the phrase had women and fireworks more specifically in mind), is something of a surprise, because, at least as far as the engine bay is concerned, this is precisely what VW has done with the GTI 35…
When the company introduced us to the MK6 GTI at a launch in St Tropez, they provided us with a small but perfectly formed shoal of Mk1 cars to sample.
Initial glee at first glimpse of a taut, pugnacious form that hasn’t been bettered in any subsequent iteration rapidly turned to horror after just 30 seconds behind the wheel.
The tartan seat upholstery-sponsored experience was, frankly, ghastly. An absence of power steering meant that the simple act of leaving the car park required arms like condoms stuffed full of walnuts; the GTI proved nothing like as fast as memory served; and the stopping power of the brakes was right up there with rubbing a small block of well varnished mahogany against the carriage sides of a passing express train.
All of which explains why I greeted the news that VW has gone back a generation and pilfered the powerplant from the previous generation GTi to power this anniversary edition with all the suspicion of a pet rescued from Battersea Dog’s Home by a Korean chef.
I needn’t have worried. Especially if you look upon this marvellous powerplant not so much as an uprated oldster, but more a downrated iteration of the 266bhp unit from the Golf R; the 232bhp on offer providing more than enough excitement allied to a sufficiently relaxed state of tune that you just know the thing’ll never burst.
The upshot is a car which will potter through the daily grind with all the ironclad insouciance we’ve come to expect from a Golf, yet, on demand, lash to 62mph in 6.6 seconds and on to 153mph displaying a poise, balance and hunger for the next hairpin that makes it a constant pleasure to scare the missus witless with.
Better yet, unlike many hotter hatches equipped with relatively small cubic capacities, the mysteries of a ‘sound generator’ in front of the cabin bulkhead ensure that, all windows in the engine room open under stout throttle, the VW Golf GTI 35 makes a terrific noise.
Best of all, and also unlike many hotter hatches, it is possible to live with this car on a daily basis and enjoy it for its simple practicality without feeling the need to go everywhere at maximum attack (when anyone’s watching).
Park one of these in front of your house and you’ll quickly come to realise you’ll never really need another car.
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VW Golf GTI 35 (2012) CAR review
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Melben says
RE: VW Golf GTI 35 (2012) CAR review
Anthony Your blaspheming offends me greatly. You do not have to begin a review with words like that - it might be modern times and you might want to be the Jeremy Clarkson of Car magazine, but none of your colleagues in the past fifty years felt the need to be so offensive intentionally. I too have read Car magazine since its earliest days. Setright would turn in his grave and even Bishop wouldn't have gone that low, irreverent as he was.
Anthony
Your blaspheming offends me greatly. You do not have to begin a review with words like that - it might be modern times and you might want to be the Jeremy Clarkson of Car magazine, but none of your colleagues in the past fifty years felt the need to be so offensive intentionally. I too have read Car magazine since its earliest days.
Setright would turn in his grave and even Bishop wouldn't have gone that low, irreverent as he was.
13 July 2012 11:29
RicCapucho says
Mr comment8, Like the name, by the way. I'm quite confident that if VW did make a lemon similar to that nasty 90's Golf (Mark 4?), then Car would indeed have the balls (and honesty) to do something akin to that cover (and yes, I do remember it well). The fact is that there are few true lemons around any more, a darwinian outcome of effective legislation combined with better informed punters voting with their wallets. That's not to say that there aren't new cars available that are poor compromises on price or function or sex-appeal, but none I can think of are **** on all measures. The Golf Mark 6 is a good car (if a tad pricy) especially in GTI guise, and the current Car Magazine has the duty to say so. And why not? Should they have a laugh and say it's totally **** for entertainment value? On another tack, the 80's Car Magazine (and its defunct competitors, Perfomance Car and Fast Lane) can be accused of rampant exaggeration and downright lies when it described the "supercars" of those times as being anything other than ****, unreliable, heavy, slower than advertised, and generally undrivable. A Golf GTI or 205 GTI 1.9 or Renault 5 GT Turbo could run rings around any of 'em on the bendy bits, and given 'em a fair old chase down the long straights. This old dinosaur did just that back in the day, and was only ever bested by those rotters driving Sierra Cosworths... Ahh nostalgia... My current Cooper S has about 184bhp to punt its 1,250kg around, which translates into 150bhp/tonne; which is identical to a 1985 Peugeot 205 GTI 1.9 with 130bhp and 850kg, which explains why the shove in the back feels pretty much as I remember it. Current cars are getting too heavy, innit, wot with aircon, electric everything, and crash regs. Hence the current horsepower race: 200bhp? That's for pansies, wot yer need is 300bhp! Nah, any old Audi has 300 horses these days, yer want 400bhp... etc etc. Where was I? Ooerr, there I go digressing again. I does like to digress, I does. Ric
Mr comment8,
Like the name, by the way.
I'm quite confident that if VW did make a lemon similar to that nasty 90's Golf (Mark 4?), then Car would indeed have the balls (and honesty) to do something akin to that cover (and yes, I do remember it well). The fact is that there are few true lemons around any more, a darwinian outcome of effective legislation combined with better informed punters voting with their wallets. That's not to say that there aren't new cars available that are poor compromises on price or function or sex-appeal, but none I can think of are **** on all measures.
The Golf Mark 6 is a good car (if a tad pricy) especially in GTI guise, and the current Car Magazine has the duty to say so. And why not? Should they have a laugh and say it's totally **** for entertainment value?
On another tack, the 80's Car Magazine (and its defunct competitors, Perfomance Car and Fast Lane) can be accused of rampant exaggeration and downright lies when it described the "supercars" of those times as being anything other than ****, unreliable, heavy, slower than advertised, and generally undrivable. A Golf GTI or 205 GTI 1.9 or Renault 5 GT Turbo could run rings around any of 'em on the bendy bits, and given 'em a fair old chase down the long straights. This old dinosaur did just that back in the day, and was only ever bested by those rotters driving Sierra Cosworths...
Ahh nostalgia...
My current Cooper S has about 184bhp to punt its 1,250kg around, which translates into 150bhp/tonne; which is identical to a 1985 Peugeot 205 GTI 1.9 with 130bhp and 850kg, which explains why the shove in the back feels pretty much as I remember it. Current cars are getting too heavy, innit, wot with aircon, electric everything, and crash regs. Hence the current horsepower race: 200bhp? That's for pansies, wot yer need is 300bhp! Nah, any old Audi has 300 horses these days, yer want 400bhp... etc etc.
Where was I? Ooerr, there I go digressing again. I does like to digress, I does.
Ric
31 May 2012 12:10
comment8 says
@RicChapucho - do you not recall the famous Lemon cover from the mid 90’s which graphically illustrated CARs view of the then current Golf? Can you imagine CAR doing the same thing today?
30 May 2012 15:33
Having been a reader since around 1978 (and grown up with Setright, Bishop, Llewellyn, et al) I have to disagree with the detractors below; Car is (almost) back to its good old self. The laddish experiment is over, the rats chucked out of Toad Hall, and we're back to poop-poop, more or less like the good old days. I'm very much pro-Aaanthony fffrench-CCConstant, he being (to my mind) a worthy inheritor of the George "don't give a toss" Bishop crown of laugh-out-loud irreverence. Mr fff-C adds a giggle per paragraph, and they often leave me gasping for breath. Gavin Green is a first class writer who may stand shoulder to shoulder with the Great Phil Lewellyn himself. For some reason someone's photo-shopped Gavin's cheery grin upside down. Might wanna sort that out sometime, Mr Green. And who replaces Setright himself? Well, I'm not sure the modern reader's up to putting up to his obsessions with all things Bristol, Honda, 3-wheeled, and sundry other weirdnesses that passed me by at the time. Cracking wordsmith, though. Oh, and the Car Magazine of the 1980's invariably gushed over the Golf GTi, so not sure why anyone thinks a pro-Golf review is a symptom of Car's current decline... Ric
Having been a reader since around 1978 (and grown up with Setright, Bishop, Llewellyn, et al) I have to disagree with the detractors below; Car is (almost) back to its good old self. The laddish experiment is over, the rats chucked out of Toad Hall, and we're back to poop-poop, more or less like the good old days.
I'm very much pro-Aaanthony fffrench-CCConstant, he being (to my mind) a worthy inheritor of the George "don't give a toss" Bishop crown of laugh-out-loud irreverence. Mr fff-C adds a giggle per paragraph, and they often leave me gasping for breath.
Gavin Green is a first class writer who may stand shoulder to shoulder with the Great Phil Lewellyn himself. For some reason someone's photo-shopped Gavin's cheery grin upside down. Might wanna sort that out sometime, Mr Green.
And who replaces Setright himself? Well, I'm not sure the modern reader's up to putting up to his obsessions with all things Bristol, Honda, 3-wheeled, and sundry other weirdnesses that passed me by at the time. Cracking wordsmith, though.
Oh, and the Car Magazine of the 1980's invariably gushed over the Golf GTi, so not sure why anyone thinks a pro-Golf review is a symptom of Car's current decline...
30 May 2012 13:56
carreader says
"more fun than a clown on fire" love it !!!! this is the best mk6 golf so far, largely down to using the old ea113 motor, unburdened by the clumsy haldex 4wd of the glof r.
"more fun than a clown on fire"
love it !!!!
this is the best mk6 golf so far, largely down to using the old ea113 motor, unburdened by the clumsy haldex 4wd of the glof r.
30 May 2012 00:57
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