Comparison Tests
From the July 2013 Issue of Car and Driver
TESTED
At roadside cafeterias in France, next to the napkins, cutlery, and plastic trays, are baskets of free dinner rolls. Hungry? Take as much as you want; bread is as free as air. We have to assume that this is a legacy of the French Revolution. No need to steal, Jean Valjean. The struggle is over. Everyone is equal and no one will go hungry. Put away the guillotine.
Parked outside the cafeteria is a 2015 Volkswagen GTI, the seventh generation of the hatchback that brought a taste of speed, in a dinner-roll-shaped package, to the common man. It’s not free bread, but it does represent a revolution. The super Golf was and remains the great egalitarian performance car, the first to so effectively combine power, economy, handling, practicality, and price. And, like all breakthrough ideas, it spawned imitators, all promising the same mix of virtues.
Volkswagen has not slacked off for its seventh GTI. A new platform called MQB is both lighter and stronger than before. At a glance, it does look a lot like its predecessor, but the metal is more tightly folded and the roof is lower. Longer in wheelbase and overall length by 2.1 inches, the GTI is within an inch in other dimensions. There’s more space inside, and the interior décor, while familiar, is also completely updated.
Power comes from the third generation of Volkswagen’s direct-injected, 2.0-liter turbo EA888 engine. Base versions bound for the U.S. will likely come with 210 horsepower (10 more than before) and 258 pound-feet of torque (51 more than before). With the addition of variable lift on the exhaust valves, the new engine is now similar in spec to the version Audi has been using in the A4 for several years. We’ll also get the optional Performance package that increases horsepower by another 10 ponies and adds an electronically controlled torque-vectoring differential, but not until late 2014. We drove a European Performance-package car alongside this test’s GTI and can report that no matter how imprudent you are with the acceleration, the differential holds the cornering line as if the car were tethered by an invisible string. But we opted for the standard Euro-spec car for this comparison because the wait for a GTI in the States is already long enough, and the conventional differential works quite well.
Parked next to the GTI is a Tangerine Scream Ford Focus ST. A staff favorite and 10Best winner, the 247-hp (Euro-spec) ST may be a GTI imitator, but it acts as if it’s running the Monte Carlo rally. It’s prepped to compete, too—no hatchback since the Lancia Delta Integrale has looked more ready for sponsorship decals. But the ST is not in France to run a timed stage. The ST is here because it was the only car able to vanquish the last GTI in our testing. So we filled our coat pockets with free bread and drove off to figure out which democratized performance ideology we’d prefer to follow.
