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2007 Volkswagen GTI 5dr. Road Test Part I

I've been dying to get around to my own comments about the GTI—you see,Justin has had a few of them for a couple of reviews, a video review and even one for comparative purposes, and while I've had a chance to drive them all, I haven't had a chance to post a review. Contrary to a lot of other journalists who are wrapped up in the idea that the purity of the Mark I GTI has been diluted to the point of no fun by the time it arrived at the “fat, stupid” Mark IV, I DON'T CARE (Justin: that's just ‘cause you own one). I just care whether the GTI is a great car today. In other words, you can get your history lesson somewhere else, I'm only here to talk about my GTI. Well, actually, it was Volkswagen of Canada's GTI, but I got downright possessive of it because every time I get in another GTI, I ‘get it' a little bit more.

Mind you, my GTI would have the traditional two doors and black paint as opposed to the four doors and silver color our extended road test car featured, but the Interlagos plaid cloth seats, six-speed stick and 18-inch wheel upgrade were just Goldilocks for me. I don't really need the extra doors for that

Those three letters make us feel warm and happy inside. (Photo: Justin Couture, American Auto Press)

one evening every couple weeks when I'm asked to load people in back, and the black paint job is perfectly sinister for a car of this character.

The GTI also looks great in classic Candy White, offsetting the blackedout honeycomb patterned grille insert and thin red stripe highlighting it. Of course, the dark grey is also very nice, and likely would wear well, showing less dirt or fade than black or white (black and white cars are impossible to keep clean). Why am I so caught up in the colors? Because I will have to decide which color to order mine in when the time comes. It might be a year or two away, and you might think I'm nuts for wanting to invest in a car of questionable reliability and limited performance when I get to drive almost every car on the market from week to week, but the GTI is that good.

Every time I've gotten into one, be it DSG or manual, I've come to love

Open wide! Five door GTI a new prospect, and gives buyers who shunned the three-door for practicality reasons no excuses. (Photo: Justin Couture, American Auto Press)

it a little more, and it all starts with the steering wheel. Not only is the steering wheel an ergonomic masterpiece, but it subtly and delicately involves you in the driving experience and makes you feel all-knowing and all-capable. If you're not sure what you're capable of, you'll quickly find out, and if you approach gradually and with care, you'll find out before you're in the ditch or into the guardrail, because you feel each tire's struggles intimately through the light steering and direct chassis. Listen with all your senses (okay, let's leave taste buds out of this), and you'll feel the tires at the front giving up traction if you push it too fast through a turn and if you're carrying too much speed, lift carefully and judiciously and you can bring the back end around a bit without suddenly finding yourself with your trunk in a ditch and staring at the sky.

This car won't necessarily pull over 1.0 g on the skid pad (in fact, it definitely won't),but as the Mini has taught us, you don't need to be a supercar to be a super car.

No one else does retro cool better than VW. Tartan plaid is utterly awesome. (Photo: Justin Couture, American Auto Press)

While even the base Mini can thrill with a punchy little package, its actual performance is rather on the low end of the scale. A base Rabbit is also a very capable and enjoyable car, but bump it up to the GTI (and from a base $19,995 to a starting $29,995 for the five-door GTI), and you get a car that is about as fast as you'll need if you like your license and as rewarding as almost anything out there that isn't built with severe punishment of the driver on real roads as part of the equation. It's not quite at the level of an S2000 or a Boxster for telepathic feel and execution, but as BMWs get more and more technical and less thrilling on ordinary drives (I'm thinking 335i, which makes license-losing speeds seem sedentary), the strength of the GTI—its ability to make every drive an experience—becomes all the more apparent.

It does have a slight tendency to start climbing in speed as you cruise the highway, because its ride seems so natural at higher and higher speeds—the solution: keep it in third or fourth, gear, listen to the exhaust bellow over the ke-nucking of the FSI fuel injection and recite lines from the excellent fast commercials: “Sweetie, it's really hard for me to enjoy the sound of the engine

So cool, we just had to park it on ice. (Photo: Justin Couture, American Auto Press)

with all that yakkin'.” It's one of the best notes I've ever heard come out of an engine sporting less than six cylinders—sorry Honda fans, there's only so much I can take of those screaming VTECs.

Instead, I took care of the screaming, or really they were morelike giddy little shrieks and yips that would do a Chihuahua proud, finding reasons to take a pulse of its 2.0-liter turbo and find that sweet surge where torque and horsepower cross just north of 5000 and just hold it. Of course, sometimes holding it is but a brief moment of suspended time, and the next click of the second hand had me on and off the clutch and up to the next gear, muscling it a bit through the grabby gates and giving it full pedal to watch the tach climb back over noon as my own heart held its beat until I look a little to the right to see where the speedo announces a verdict of “guilty.”

This car holds both ends of the spectrum in balance, offering simple pleasures at ordinary speeds, but reinforcing and renewing driver involvement in an ever more automated world and with enough power and a high enough threshold to bring you to the edge of reason without going over. Caution is necessary, because Fast always seems to be offering more, and it was only with great restraint that I avoided dipping too often into the well of indiscretion, and taking it all at once, all for myself.

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