NEW VW GOLF GTI Clubsport 45: The GTI Just Levelled UP!

[Music] hard to believe but the golf gti is 45 years old so i thought i'd throw a bit of a celebration yay all right it's not much of a celebration i know but luckily for us volkswagen have organised a little celebration all of their own [Music] this is the gti club sport 45 and it was built to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the world's most enduring hot hatch the golf gti it is the most powerful the most aggressive the most exclusive gti money can buy right now and there's no denying it as a hot hatch it is outstanding it's fast it's good looking it's genuinely usable every single day it's like vw have involved the gti format over the decades to come up with what is on paper the ultimate hot hatch but as always to get a real sense of whether this is a proper step forward we need to go back back into time [Music] 1976 was a big year steve jobs formed apple concord made its first commercial flight and nasa unveiled the first space shuttle the enterprise but it was also the year the hot hatch was invented the year a small team of engineers from volkswagen sprinkled their magic over its people's car and created the original golf gti and this is where it all began it started life as a functional family hatchback but thanks to a 1.6 liter engine that made 110 horsepower and a body that only weighed 800 kilograms it was a blast it proved that you could have fun in a family car and it looked the part as well thanks to these big chunky wheel arch extensions the red around the radiator grille the tartan seats and of course the famous golf ball knob you've gotta love german humor and everybody wanted a piece of it originally they aimed to sell only five thousand but by the end of its life they'd sold five hundred 000 vw was ending the 70s with a bang [Music] and they weren't about to let up when the sequel arrived in 1984. while the karate kid and the terminator lit up our big screens the mark ii golf lit up the streets it was bigger and better and it had to be with the renault 5 turbo and peugeot 205 jumping on the hot hatch bandwagon the peugeot even borrowed the gti letters original mark twos didn't improve on power but the 16 valve versions that followed delivered 129 horsepower helping propel the mark ii from 0 to 60 in under 8 seconds with that level of performance and styling to make even fans of rival hot hatches jealous the mark ii was for many peak golf but vw wasn't about to stop there fast forward to 1992 britain has just joined the eu in a move that will surely last forever and the mark iii golf gti has arrived this one is a bit more sophisticated it's a bit more grown up it's got something called a minidisc player but crucially it's also a bit heavier it's a decent car but compared to rivals from renault and vauxhall it's just a bit of a sluggish letdown but nowhere near as big a letdown as the mark iv 1998 dvds come to the uk google's launched vw are searching for a better gti in the mark iii but fails to deliver it was a brilliant car sophisticated comfortable great build quality but lacked the essence of what the gti was all about it was actually slower to 60 than the original gti bw needed a fix and in the mark 5 they got one now this is more like it in 2004 vw took the gti back to where it was supposed to be they listened to the critics and reinvented it as a proper performance car it looked great but it also handled great thanks to an independent multi-link rear suspension by then the engine was banging out 200 horsepower but the star of the show was the optional dsg twin clutch gearbox and that dropped the not to 62 time to 6.9 seconds back in 04 the only thing quicker than this was lance armstrong and he i mean he had help with the 2009 mark vi the gti was truly back in its stride this version honed by racing legend han stuck featured new advancements including an electronic diff lock which made it faster than ever by the time the mark vii arrived in 2013 the legacy of the golf gti was deservedly cemented and then cemented again with the brilliant 7.5 arguably peak gti which brings us to 2021 45 years after the original to the mark 8 but not just any market the 40 thousand pound golf gti club sport 45 built to celebrate four and a half decades of this iconic hot hatch [Applause] [Music] so a celebrations goal it's not exactly extravagant is it if you're expecting some cheeky gifts like a little power boost or a manual gearbox then the bad news is there aren't any but the good news is that the car this thing is based on the gti club sport was already brilliant it uses the same 2-liter turbo charge engine which makes 300 ps and 400 newton meters of torque all of which goes through a 7-speed dsg to the front wheels in this case though the final drive has been shortened so it now accelerates from zero to 62 in 5.6 seconds and it will do 155 miles an hour flat out trust me when i tell you this is a properly fast hot hatch the engine is just so smooth as well you want to wring it out and it keeps on pulling it is a joy to accelerate in this thing [Applause] the gearbox is a bit of a mixed bag though there's good news and bad news with that the good news is that it ups and down shifts reasonably willingly you never find yourself in a situation where it doesn't want to shift down the bad news is that it's not a manual it doesn't even have a manual mode look i put it into second gear right now and floor it and it just up shifts automatically if you're the type of driver that likes to take control of their own destiny and be rewarded for when they get it right or learn from when they get it wrong then this is not the gearbox for you [Applause] the brakes are brilliant though 357 millimeter discs up front so bigger than you get on a standard gti and the stopping power is absolutely incredible but more impressive than that is how easy they are to modulate it's so easy to apply the perfect amount of braking force every single millimeter of travel on the pedal translates to a different amount of retardation in the brakes and it just gives you so much confidence to drive this car quickly as for the steering well it's not the quickest and not the most communicative but there is a little bit of playfulness in the balance between under and oversteer if you go looking for it and there's loads there's so much grip and traction in this car [Music] dcc or dynamic chassis control is unfortunately an option in the club sport 45 but i would recommend you spend the 785 pounds and get it fitted because it allows you to set this car up exactly how you want you can have the suspension super soft or super firm and everything in between i'm not kidding there's about 15 different levels to choose from if you don't want to set it up yourself then the sweet spot weirdly enough is probably nurburgring mode which is a subset of sports mode and it works absolutely brilliant out here on these british b roads [Music] as for the exhaust it's an akrapovic unit it's not normally fitted to the gti but it's here on the club sport 45 and it sounds pretty decent it's maybe not as anti-social as some old-school boy racers might like but here especially at lower revs when you give it a little blip it does sound nice as a celebration then the club sport 45 isn't like a mad raucous 21st birthday bash where you smash one too many jagers and wake up the next morning regretting every single decision you've ever made it's actually much more like a 45th birthday celebration where you have a couple of glasses of red wine a slice of gluten-free cake early to bed lift the fight another day mark the occasion but don't go mental save that one for the big 5-0 [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: AutoTrader

Views: 251,851

Rating: 4.9294372 out of 5

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Id: lN4IV75YCZM

Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 10 2021