Volkswagen’s new hatch packs a mighty punch
The Golf GTI Clubsport is not just another vehicle on the road, but one that offers drivers a rewarding, memorable experience
If you like golf, or the Golf, does that automatically make you a middle-aged Tory? With a Porsche Cayenne to take you to the ParkNShop Fusion and back? Not me: I’m a champagne socialist to my Belstaff and Tag Heuer core, and I like it.
The Golf, that is. Specifically the Volkswagen Golf GTI Clubsport, not any old Golf and not any old clubsport (move over, Holden), but the 40th anniversary model of the Golf, a car made for the kind of understated high-performance motoring that doesn’t attract the attention of the traffic plods, and for fun on the open road delivered in no little style. But not made in great numbers, so you’ll have to blast straight into top gear if you want one because only 40 units are destined for Hong Kong.
What’s so special then about a car its detractors paint as just an overpriced school-run hatchback with dull looks that lost any “hot hatch” pretensions long ago?
Accusations of being pulchritudinously challenged can hardly be tossed the way of the Clubsport, which has new design elements sharp enough for Carnaby Street and a knowing elegance to match. Spoiler alert: below the front bumper the Clubsport has a spoiler masquerading as a splitter, plus another at the back end, which trumpets a new rear diffuser and motorsport roof spoiler. Nor is that front bumper all mouth and no trousers, featuring as it does wide lateral air inlets with “piano black” air deflectors. Downforce has never sounded so musical – or in its hardware looked so much like a shark.
Volkswagen has made the Clubsport the Manny Pacquiao of hatchbacks: compact, quick out of its corner, punching above its weight and a heavy hitter in every department, despite being lighter than its predecessors.
The black roof and Belvedere-design 18-inch alloy wheels of the Clubsport beef up the mean factor, as do, subtly, the nips and tucks low down along the flanks of the bodywork. These put this agile car into something like a boxer’s crouch – more of which later – particularly in the case of the three-door, rather than the five-door, edition, which says, “hip, discerning single bloke with cash” rather than “family man”.