► Flat-out in the fastest-ever Golf GTI
► VW’s new Clubsport driven
► 286bhp and 280lb ft of torque on tap
The Daily Mail wouldn’t like this at all. Instead of the sound of middle-class indignation and outraged hand-wringing all I can hear is the bellow of tyres squealing on hot tarmac. And the sound of laughter, I can hear that too, and it seems to be coming from me. I can’t help it. I’m peering over the red ‘straight ahead’ marker at the top of an alcantara steering wheel, hanging on like a rollercoaster passenger as the twists and undulations of the Algarve’s mini-Nürburgring unfold before me in a constantly hastening flurry. Over the walkie-talkie rattling in the cupholder a German voice from the pace-setting Golf R ahead urges me on: ‘Speed is good, get closer to me, find ze apex, aim for ze cone! Come on, come on! Use third, flat here, flat!’
I’ll level with you: I’m a bit rubbish at this, particularly on a technical and unfamiliar track such as Portimao, but nobody could fail to have enormous fun behind this wheel, not even a Daily Mail reader. I wish every one of the many naysayers who condemn Volkswagen for cheating the diesel emissions test could have taken a breather from their knife-sharpening to be here today. I can’t guarantee it would counter their self-righteousness, but I absolutely guarantee it would make them think differently about VW, and maybe even about how the car world would feel if this disgraceful scandal were to bring the company down.
Every story has more than one side, and this is another side of Volkswagen, the antithesis of dieselgate.
The Golf GTI Clubsport is essentially the GTI’s 40th birthday present, and its intended purity of purpose neatly closes the circle that started with the audacious, skunkworks-hewn 1976 original but has become more and more grown-up over seven generations. The GTI’s baseball cap has been slowly rotating over those 40 years, and now the Clubsport returns it to its rightful, back-to-front position.
Although, unlike the Mk1 GTI, this car wasn’t produced by a bunch of enthusiastic employees working in their spare time on an unauthorised project, there is still a sense of mischief about the Clubsport. It has no strategic purpose as such, it will be built in limited numbers, will achieve modest sales, will make hardly any money, and will become a fixture in the same toy cupboard where previous birthday presents – the 20th and 25th Anniversary GTIs, and Editions 30 and 35 – gather emotional dust. But boy does it get us excited when we peel back the wrapping and read the label.
The label says that this is the most powerful GTI ever made. Its 261bhp humbles even the Performance Pack-equipped 227bhp standard GTI, and having arrived at 62mph in 5.9sec it drums its fingers impatiently for a full half second waiting for the latter to catch up. But enough of this conventional bragging – the party trick is a hidden pocket of extra power, a secret compartment that nobody else knows about until you open it with a flourish and amaze your mates. The key is hidden in the carpet under the throttle pedal – a kickdown switch that opens a secret stash of 10% more power and 10% more torque, anywhere between third gear and sixth. The effect is what Russell Bulgin once referred to as Blur’s Song 2 moment (Whoo-hoo!), and the fact that Russell was talking about Honda’s tremendous VTEC kick-in point tells you something about how big a punch the Clubsport is packing.
For 10 seconds you’re driving a Golf with 286bhp – just 11 shy of the sensible, flag-bearing four-wheel-drive Golf R – and 280lb ft of torque. Good numbers, but what impresses most is the linear nature of the boost – there’s no punch in the kidneys, no inertia-reel shenanigans, merely a quicklyenveloping sense of pure urge that makes the 2.0-litre turbo four feel fleetingly like a thick six.
It’s possible that lack of drama may not suit the type of lad (or lass) who fancies a car like this, but he can always turn to launch control, which doubles to 20sec his access to the extra juice the moment he lifts his left foot off the brake pedal with the engine running at 3000rpm, and stamps down with his right. There may be a sign on the road into Wolfsburg which reads ‘Volkswagen welcomes careful hooligans’.
Of course VW could have dispensed with all this hokum and simply dished up a 286bhp GTI, but where’s the fun in that? Twinkly eyed chassis guru Karsten Schebsdat says it’s all about minimising stresses and wear on the drivetrain except when you need a cheeky push-to-pass or wish to hook up a monumental exit from a complex set of track corners. But he’s kidding no one. His is the kind of twinkliness that must have personified those original Mk1 GTI skunksters – a fanaticist with an incredibly detailed desire to achieve a specific goal. And for a man whose job is to max the road manners of every living VW, from Up to Phaeton, having such a focused, naughty purpose must be a joyous thing. ‘The philosophy is to make this the fastest Golf on track, and the quickest way is to eliminate both understeer and oversteer,’ he says. ‘Everything has to be smooth and linear, it has to feel natural. That’s the way human beings interact best with a car.’
So, undistracted by the occasional big boss plummeting past his office window, Schebsdat mused over the more micro problem of how to make the GTI’s already exceptional, electronic-diff-lock-equipped chassis grippier. His answer: aerodynamics. The Clubsport may look like it’s recently been struck a glancing blow by the ghost of Max Power magazine, but these bits and pieces have a job to do. The front bumper has been completely redesigned, with an ‘air curtain’ created by channelling air through those piano-black gills and out through the wheel housing. There are extra intakes flanking the radiator grille and a new front splitter, which combine to create ‘light downforce’ on the front axle. At the rear the wind-tunnel-honed two-part roof spoiler and redesigned diffuser exert ‘substantial downforce’ on the rear wheels. How ‘substantial’, you ask? They wouldn’t say.
Out on the track we attempt to feel the effect, but without being Lewis Hamilton we simply can’t. None of us – not even the blokes with their own racing booties (and most of them aren’t interested in traction – quite the opposite). What we can do, however, is feel how incredible the Golf GTI’s chassis is at hauling you around corners faster and faster with each lap, the diff performing its trick of sending extra drive to the outside cornering wheel to stop the inner wheel losing traction and effectively slingshot you round the corner. Faster… and faster – the damn limit’s got to be round here somewhere, maybe just around the next corner, just over that blind crest. If we can’t find the limit we can’t see how the car behaves when it gets there. This is it, surely? We barrel into a right-hander, the tyres sing their song, I’m hanging on so tight the wheel feels like Velcro, and… and… the car goes around the corner tight and level and undramatic. No wheelspin, no understeer, no steering correction, no lightness at the rear. Dead calm. In all the confusion, my baseball cap has spun round so the peak’s facing forward again.
It’s hard to know whether to be disappointed or simply awestruck. Here’s the Golf GTI that will keep young Oscar out of the very hedges through which his dad Gary routinely plunged in his Mk1. Except for one thing, of course – the track surface at Portimao is smoother than Steve Rider and the B660 is bumpier than landing on water, plus we’re on the optional semi-slick tyres today (the mere existence of which suggests plenty about the Clubsport’s mission). So when Oscar approaches the hedge he may yet torque-steer and tramline his way into the arable as he tries to squeeze all that power through the fronts and finds that 286 into two doesn’t go. Until we get to the road, though, we are guessing. But we know we’ll have fun finding out.in the pits I sit quietly in my shiny-backed bucket seat, one hand still gripping the alcantara wheel, the other on the true-to-legend golf-ball gearstick, and consider the other steering wheel bosses I very much hope to be sitting behind soon – Bentley Speed Six, Bugatti Chiron, Lamborghini Urus, Bentayga, 911, R8 – and of those I have sat behind previously, bearing names as varied as Audi, Seat, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley – every one part of VW Group. Most of the automotive evolutionary scale is represented among them.
But our trust has been shaken by the indefensible cynicism with which VW perverted the imperfect yet well-intended emissions test. I neither condone nor defend it, but let’s be careful here – we are none of us perfect. Many Daily Mail readers will have cheated in their lives at some point, sometime, somehow, and so indeed have I. Should we all be condemned in perpetuity? I believe the way we as customers, as fans, as enthusiasts, as politicians and as society react from here will inform not only the future of VW but also the future of the motor car, the industry that makes it and probably our wider relationship with the brands that furnish our lives with sportswear, with banking services, with groceries, with mobile phones… many of which have greater indiscretions on their records than does VW.
How do we deal with loss of trust in brands we love? The sense of hurt and betrayal is only natural, but we should try to stay calm, to see the whole picture, to ask what it is we see when we look at the badge in question. What does VW mean to you? Arrogant German bosses in grey suits or brilliant engineers creating great affordable cars? Dull Polo or life-affirming 911 GT3? Irresponsible polluters or makers of cleaner engines than America ever made? Climate-change deniers or electric car pioneers? Weaker as a result of dieselgate or about to be reborn stronger?
Back in Portimao it’s dusk, but the circuit is still open, and there’s a three-door Clubsport sitting idle in the pitlane, ticking and pinging to itself after its last outing. It looks sensational in this light. Everyone else is in the pit garage drinking coffee – there’s nobody around. Come on, none of you would have resisted either. No pace car this time, and most of the apex cones have been scattered by either the rising breeze or the too-close attentions of enthusiastic cornerers. No matter, I missed most of the apexes anyway.
I press the switch on the centre console for three seconds and the Electronic Stability Control disengages. What am I doing? Have I not heard of ‘just one more lap’ syndrome, the claimer of more track scalps than all the earlier laps put together? The car seems to have possessed me. It feels alive, the brakes, now slightly fried, feel pleasingly imperfect, the tyres stickier than ever, the steering, which has a faster rack than the standard GTI, now seems to require only a wrist flex in all but the tightest corners. I’m quicker than before. The relationship between throttle and steering begins to make sense – you can steer on the throttle, you can be gentle in and brutal out, and once you’re in that flow it becomes easier to set up for the next corner. The suspension has been tuned stiffer at the rear and softer up front, so the car digs in but fires out. It makes sense, damnit!
Then I scare myself, very nearly fall off into a strangely positioned gravel trap on a crest, quietly panic, pootle back to the pits and don’t mention it to anyone. I’ve got away with it. It will be harder for VW to do the same, but come on, they build cars like this, for no better reason than for the sheer hell of it. So, call me irresponsible, but I hope in the end, reputationally at least, they get away with it too.
The specs: VW Golf GTI Clubsport
Price: £30,000 (est)
On sale: Jan 2016
Engine: 1984cc 16v turbocharged 4-cyl, 261bhp @ 5350-6600rpm (286bhp with boost function), 258lb ft @ 1700-5300rpm (280lb ft with boost)
Transmission: 6-speed dual-clutch DSG, front-wheel drive
Performance: 5.9sec 0-62mph, 155mph, 42.2mpg, 158g/km CO2
Weight/made from: 1395kg/steel
Length/width/height: 4246/1782/1408mm
Rating: ****
Not VW’s first scandal
Scandal #1: 1987
VW suffered £160m losses and saw its profits halved after a foreign exchange fraud cooked up by a broker in Frankfurt.
Scandal #2: 1993
VW gets embroiled in the biggest corporate espionage case of all time. When it poached GM cost-cutter Jose Ignacio Lopez from GM he brought with him 10,000 documents on future product and factories. GM sued, and VW settled for $100m and a promise to buy $1bn of GM parts.
Scandal #3: 2005
VW was alleged to have provided holidays and prostitutes to union leaders, and to have made payments to the Brazilian mistress of works council leader Klaus Volkert. Ferdinand Piëch testified at Volkert’s trial. Later a bigger fish, Peter Hartz, VW human resources boss and adviser to the German chancellor, was forced to quit and fined €576,000 for his part in the scandal.
Scandal #4: 2009
Porsche accused of market manipulation in its bid to take over VW. It was alleged to have used a dubious options strategy to subvert the value of VW shares, and ended up being merged into the company it had tried to conquer.