Really? by Jeremy Clarkson

Author:Jeremy Clarkson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405939089
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-10-02T16:00:00+00:00

The moor the merrier in our hot hatch rally

VW Golf GTI Clubsport

My television colleagues and I had to visit Whitby recently, which meant there was a debate in the office about how we’d get to North Yorkshire. If we chose something comfortable and quiet, to deal with the massively over-policed M1, it’d be no fun at all once we got past Malton and said: ‘Have some of that.’

Whereas if we chose something that would be fun on that truly glorious road over Fylingdales Moor, it’d be a chore in the stop-start hell that is the M1.

In the end we decided to cheat and use a train from London to York, which is more expensive than going on a golden elephant but takes about three minutes these days. And then we’d use a car for the final leg.

But what car? The temptation, obviously, was to select something idiotic – a Lamborghini Aventador, perhaps, or the new and really rather beautiful Ferrari GTC4Lusso. But the truth is, show-off cars such as those are designed to work, mostly, in cities.

So quite quickly all three of us decided that hot hatchbacks would be perfect for the job. And this caused another debate. There’s no doubt at all that the best of the bunch is the little Ford Fiesta ST. But I’d driven that, and anyway it was shotgunned immediately by Mr Hammond.

And before I could draw breath to say, ‘Well, I’ll have a Ford Focus RS, then’, James May put down his pipe, adjusted his slippers and shotgunned that. So I had a good long think and remembered that Volkswagen had recently smashed the front-wheel-drive lap record at the Nürburgring with a car called the Golf GTI Clubsport S.

In essence it’s a GTI, but, thanks to a lot of electrical jiggery-pokery under the bonnet, it produces a colossal 306bhp. And there’s more. The ride has been made priapic. The body shell has been stiffened. The back seats and the parcel shelf and various bits of carpet have been removed. And as a result it’s hard and tight and light and, as we saw when it broke that lap record, very, very fast.

This is exactly the sort of car that would be terrible to live with day to day but perfect for an afternoon assault on the North York Moors. I was very happy with my choice until I received word that the Clubsport S is a limited-edition special, and that none was available.

Instead I ended up with a car built to celebrate the GTI’s fortieth birthday. Called the Clubsport Edition 40, it looks like a Clubsport S but it has carpets and back seats and all the luxuries you’d expect. You can even have it with four doors, which is a very un-Clubsporty thing.

All of which means it’s a GTI with some spoilers and a small amount of electrical jiggery-pokery under the bonnet. And that in turn means it’s nothing more than a slightly pricier version of a car I already own.

It did have a nicer steering wheel – I’ll admit that.

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