VOLKSWAGEN GOLF GTI: The one-car-for-every-job car that you would still get up early to drive

摘要

It won't come as a surprise that our award winner here is a hatchback. Fashion may increasingly favour other, bigger, heavier bodystyles, but fashions are temporary. When you look at how versatile hatchbacks are and how much they offer for often so little outlay, it's hard to argue that an all-rounder gong could go to anything else. Not all hatchbacks are created equal; some offer premium brand refinements and desirability, others added performance and driver appeal. Yet if a small band of designers and engineers hadn't got together at Volkswagen in 1974 to set out on the unofficial, out-of-hours project that would lead to the first Golf GTI, today's highly developed hatchback market would probably look very different.