Worthy Of The Name
by David Finlay (18 Apr 05)

Having created the concept of the GTI back in the mid-70s, Volkswagen found itself being heavily criticised two decades later for applying the by now fabled set of initials to almost any Golf that could complete an overtaking manoeuvre without crossing a county boundary. No such nonsense can be found in the fifth-generation Golf range - with just short of 200bhp, and handling to match, the latest GTI fully deserves its name.

At first acquaintance, in an urban environment, the ride quality seems severe, but already you suspect that this is an acceptable price to pay for what will happen later. Even at very low speeds the steering feels wonderfully sharp, and it stays that way as you take the GTI on to roads where it can do GTI-like things.

In these circumstances it turns out that the firm ride in town was caused by the low-profile tyres, and as the cornering speeds increase and the behaviour of the chassis itself becomes more obvious than the stiffness of the sidewalls it's increasingly clear that the suspension is in fact quite soft, though very well damped. In general, the GTI is an excellent fast road car and a delight to drive.

It falls down slightly whenever it's required to provide really good traction. A relatively light throttle in a tight corner or over a crest is enough to bring the anti-wheelspin software into play. There isn't quite enough front-end control to allow the GTI to deal with this kind of thing, and for the same reason the car wobbles over motorway undulations.

This is familiar stuff. We're back to the old problem that German suspension designers don't seem to take into account the fact that roads can possibly be as bad as they are in the UK. On home ground I imagine these issues hardly figure at all.

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