Relight My Fire

After a date with an old flame, our correspondent finds that the refreshed Volkswagen Golf GTI is still the classiest act in town by far.

- Charles Rangeley-Wilson

A GENTLE refresh, power lift and price drop were all the excuses I needed to book a date with an old flame: the Golf GTI. Well, a mate of mine’s old flame, to be truthful, because, back in the early 1990s, although I did fancy my fellow art teacher’s foxy VW GTi Mk2 16-valver, I actually went out with her (much) dirtier French sister, the Peugeot 1.9 GTi. We were the GTi art department.

The VW was more stolid, aristocratic. I drove it once on a long tour back from Tours and enjoyed the novel respite of its solidity and precision. The Pug GTi I was more smitten with was, by comparison, a Betty Blue without the tranquilisers. A tempestuous, plate-smasher of a car. French loons had shoehorned an oversized van engine into an undersized go-kart, shrink-wrapped it in a black leotard and let it loose on the road. Boy, did it like to drive!