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Written by Paul Horrell
We can argue about exactly when and where it happened. I"d skate over the Autobianchi A112 Abarth (too small, not powerful enough) and the Mini Cooper (not actually a hatch) and locate it in Wolfsburg in the mid-Seventies with the Golf GTI or Paris with the R5 Gordini Turbo.Whatever, back in the mists of time, the idea of the hot hatch was had. And it was good. It was a mash-up of two fine things. First thing, the hatchback itself: a versatile car, big enough for most of us but small enough to be handy and affordable. Other thing: a too-big engine. A well-developed hot-hatch is agile and punchy and it abundantly over-delivers on thrills. Yet in the daily grind it shows an innocent face, quietly justifying itself to your spouse, kids and fleet manager.If an idea can embody such a magical portfolio of qualities over so many decades, it must have a fundamental rightness. Like some hopeless Hollywood producer endlessly pitching formulaic remixes of earlier hits, the car industry just can"t stop thinking in a depressingly binary fashion. So it assumes the hot-hatch formula can do a roll-out, and takes any other big-selling category and rams in a big engine, stiffens up the springs and swaps out the seats. Hmmmm. Hatch plus hot equals gold, but that doesn"t necessarily mean that crossover plus hot, or electric plus hot, or estate plus hot, will necessarily also strike it richPhotography: Mark Fagelson & Jonathan Fleetwood
Date written: 25 Mar 2019
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 15236
We can argue about exactly when and where it happened. I"d skate over the Autobianchi A112 Abarth (too small, not powerful enough) and the Mini Cooper (not actually a hatch) and locate it in Wolfsburg in the mid-Seventies with the Golf GTI or Paris with the R5 Gordini Turbo.Whatever, back in the mists of time, the idea of the hot hatch was had. And it was good. It was a mash-up of two fine things. First thing, the hatchback itself: a versatile car, big enough for most of us but small enough to be handy and affordable. Other thing: a too-big engine. A well-developed hot-hatch is agile and punchy and it abundantly over-delivers on thrills. Yet in the daily grind it shows an innocent face, quietly justifying itself to your spouse, kids and fleet manager.If an idea can embody such a magical portfolio of qualities over so many decades, it must have a fundamental rightness. Like some hopeless Hollywood producer endlessly pitching formulaic remixes of earlier hits, the car industry just can"t stop thinking in a depressingly binary fashion. So it assumes the hot-hatch formula can do a roll-out, and takes any other big-selling category and rams in a big engine, stiffens up the springs and swaps out the seats. Hmmmm. Hatch plus hot equals gold, but that doesn"t necessarily mean that crossover plus hot, or electric plus hot, or estate plus hot, will necessarily also strike it richPhotography: Mark Fagelson & Jonathan Fleetwood
Date written: 25 Mar 2019
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 15236