Volkswagen Golf GTI 7.5

Edgier styling, greater choice, additional spice

- Alex Inwood

AT A dinner party recently, I ran into a friend who’s poised to buy a hot hatch. He’d been researching for months, he told me, and then, with the wild look of a man who has spent too much time in front of a computer trawling through spec sheets, he exclaimed, “We’re in a hot-hatch boom!”

I could see his point. Today’s hot-hatch buyer is spoilt for choice with cutting-edge all-wheel-drive systems, ever-rising outputs, and exotic-sounding modes that start with ‘Drift’ all jostling for position. All of which has had an interesting impact on VW’s iconic Golf GTI. Once the ‘go to’ hot hatch, the GTI now finds itself swamped by more hardcore performance rivals. But don’t think this means it has lost its appeal.