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Our Cars: Volkswagen Golf GTI
3 years ago
It looks pristine, but Dan's Golf wasn't quite perfect. Luckily, he knew the answer...
I chose a set of Pirelli P Zeros because I reckoned they would suit the GTI perfectly. Several years ago I travelled to Pirelli’s Milan proving ground, Vizzola, for a magazine tyre test. I had 10 or so rival tyres to compare, Vizzola’s fiddly wet handling circuit with its figure-of-eight layout, a bone dry race track not too far away, and a similar Golf GTI (albeit the pre-facelift Mk7 model) with which to do the job.
The P Zero didn’t win, but it did perform well right across the board – dry handling on that race track, wet handling at Vizzola, braking, steady state cornering and so on. It didn’t have the sheer dry weather grip of some tyres in the test, but on the flooded handling track it was consistent and predictable where the more uncompromising tyres could be skittish. On one set in particular, I turned into a tight left-hander at the bottom of the bridge section at the same speed I had on all the other tyres, only to slide off the track and into the gravel.
I came away thinking the Pirelli was the most broadly defined tyre in the test, the one that best suited the Golf GTI I’d been driving – a broadly defined hot hatch if ever there were one. I never forgot, and when I bought a GTI of my own last year, I knew it needed a set of Zeros sooner or later.
"I had the Pirellis fitted in April and felt the improvement right away. There was more grip, of course, but also sharper steering, better traction and a much more cohesive feel to the car as a whole. The P Zeros made the car click, as though the front and back had agreed to put their differences aside and get along once more"
This, after all, isn’t a track-optimised hot hatch like a RenaultSport Megane, the kind of car that really does need aggressive rubber to feel its best. The VW is the consummate all-rounder, not some laser-guided missile. In fact, one reason I like my car so much is that it feels just like any other Golf in normal use – comfortable, effortless to drive, planted in bad weather… It performs every day and family duties with such good manners you could soon forget it’s a hot hatch with close to 250bhp. Until you fling it down a B-road, anyway.
What’s more, as this grim and gloomy UK summer has proven only too well, we don’t exactly have the climate to show very sticky tyres in their very best light, whatever the season. I had the Pirellis fitted in April and felt the improvement right away. There was more grip, of course, but also sharper steering, better traction and a much more cohesive feel to the car as a whole. The P Zeros made the car click, as though the front and back had agreed to put their differences aside and get along once more.
In short, the GTI is just more enjoyable to drive now, and if it’s any less secure in bad weather, I haven’t really noticed. We all know how important it is to pay a little extra for good quality tyres, but there’s also something to be said for choosing tyres that complement the basic attributes of the car in question. It’s not the most straightforward thing to do, not without getting the chance to compare similar tyres back to back, but by poring over the results of magazine tyre tests – looking beyond the final ranking, concentrating the outcomes of the individual tests instead – it’s simple enough to pick out the all-rounders from the more focused tyres.
“Why, then, am I wondering if it’s time for the car to go? Simply because I barely use it. It’s covered a couple of thousand miles since the Pirellis went on four months ago. I don’t see that changing in the near future either, meaning this brilliant car that costs me a meaningful amount each month has become not much more than a driveway ornament”
So a full set of more appropriate tyres has made a very good car even better. I think it’s probably the best car I’ve owned, all things considered, and among real-world, affordable cars, it might just be the best I’ve driven – certainly in terms of breadth of ability.
Why, then, am I wondering if it’s time for the car to go? Simply because I barely use it. It’s covered a couple of thousand miles since the Pirellis went on four months ago. I don’t see that changing in the near future either, meaning this brilliant car that costs me a meaningful amount each month has become not much more than a driveway ornament. So farewell, GTI? I haven’t decided yet and don’t need to right away, but it’s far too good to be driven so rarely.
Dan chose his Golf GTI carefully: a manual with the Performance pack, of course
On another note, I was appalled to see I’d badly kerbed one of my once pristine wheels – until I got a little closer and saw it wasn’t kerb damage at all, but peeling lacquer. It looks terrible and presumably the lacquer is there to protect the wheel, so maybe it needs some attention. If anyone has any experience here, please let me know in the comments.
The GTI was put to the test earlier this summer when we used it as the camera car on our Lexus LFA photoshoot on the south coast. I spent five or six hours at its wheel that day, lugged the photographer’s camera kit across the south of England and we used it for tracking photography too. That’s as stern a test of a car’s ride comfort as I’ve ever come across – if the ride is choppy and bouncy, not even the most skilled photographer will fire off any really sharp car-to-car shots. Snapper Luc Lacey, however, told me the VW’s composed ride made it an excellent tracking car.
After spending half a day in the LFA, gradually adjusting to its supercar driving position with my legs way out in front of me, the dashboard high in my line of sight and very little daylight poking in through the slim windows, I dropped back into my own car and barely recognised it. All of a sudden the seat felt about six inches too high, the road was way down beneath me and the steering wheel was almost out of reach. Once I got moving, the GTI appeared to lean so much in corners I thought it might topple over.
It’s extraordinary how a car you know inside out can be made to feel completely alien after just a few hours in a very different sort of car. But I have always been struck by how quickly that feeling fades, how just a few minutes later it’s all so familiar again. A couple of miles further down the road, I was driving my Golf GTI once more. Something I haven’t been doing nearly often enough.
