FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, in 1975, a man called Erno Rubik patented a cube and Volkswagen launched the Golf GTI. Both have done pretty well since, but, while the Rubik’s Cube hasn’t needed updating, the Golf GTI has frequently been reinvented – bringing us to this prototype of the new, eighth-generation model.
Oddly, it has no more power or torque than the outgoing GTI Performance; perhaps Volkswagen was concerned about a return to the 1975 fuel crisis, because it’s said to be a little bit more fuel-efficient instead. We can’t test that claim, though, because, being a pre-production car (although near as damn it finished), there aren’t any official WLTP figures yet.
At this stage of the GTI’s evolution, handling agility was targeted as the key area to improve, especially since…
