The 2027 Volkswagen Golf GTI Makes Me Wonder Why The Hell Hot Hatches Aren’t Everywhere

Why is the SUV/crossover the dominant form of car in the world right now? When did we, collectively, decide that? Because I don’t recall being consulted. It’s not that I have anything against SUVs and crossovers, but I just don’t get why they ended being the default state of cars at this moment in history. Most people don’t off-road them, they’re not all that big inside, and I just don’t get the appeal of wanting to be so high off the ground all the time. Really, if you were to be completely, pointy-eared-alien rational about it all, the car type that should be dominant is a four-door hatch. Ideally, a hot one.

Yes, this well-banged drum is going to get further banged! Spanked, even! Because it’s true, dammit, and everyone that drives any decent hot hatch has this same glimmer of realization, and it’s absurd to pretend it’s not A Thing. Because it is. I was reminded of this because I was recently loaned a 2027 (I think? Model years sometimes confuse me) Volkswagen Golf GTI, the Autobahn edition, and the GTI is arguably the hot hatchiest of all the heated hatches, so it was especially hard not to have the realization of, damn, why doesn’t everyone drive one of these?

This is probably the most well-worn take when it comes to the GTI or hot hatches of any kind, but the fact that these cars are still relatively rare on our roads tells me that it’s probably worth re-hashing yet again. Sometimes dead horses need more beatings than you’d expect. Sometimes they look at you funny, and you gotta let them know who’s boss. You know what I mean? And sometimes they just make really satisfying sounds.

What’s A GTI All About?

Are you kidding me with that question? Come on. You know what a GTI is all about. What? You’re telling me now that I typed in that subhead and implied it was some manner of question voiced from you, a reader, when in fact it wasn’t at all and of course you know what a GTI is all about and all of this is just some clumsy way to explain to the vanishingly tiny number of people who may be reading this and somehow unfamiliar with a GTI what it’s all about? Fine. You got me.

Well, I’m going to recap anyway. A hot hatch, in this case, a Golf GTI, is when a carmaker takes a deeply practical and rational everyday, do-whatever economy car, like a VW Golf, and gets a speed gremlin to urinate on the engine and a handling banshee to lick the suspension bits and a styling imp to sneeze on the exterior and then whammo, now you have a quick, fun-to-drive, sporty-looking hatchback that retains all the practicality of the original car, but is far more engaging to throw around.

It’s probably also significant to note that, in America, the only Golfs you can now buy are the hot hatch-type golfs: the Golf R for the hottest, and the GTI for the hot enough version. This is sort of disheartening, as it reminds us of the loss of good, cheap, usable hatchbacks in America, but at the same time, there’s something to be said for the idea that all hatchbacks maybe should be hot ones? Maybe?

What Are The Specs On The GTI? Just Dust, You Can Wipe Them Off. Get It? Specs/Specks? Never Mind.

Under that squishy engine cover that kinda looks like a mouth with teeth biting something lurks a 2-liter inline-four TSI (Tarantula Saliva Injection) engine making 241 horsepower and 273 pound-foots of torque delivered to the front wheels. I’m going to tell you that those numbers are plenty big enough, and the power output of the engine feels very well paired with the overall car. The car weighs right about 3,300 pounds, which, interestingly, gives it about the same power-to-weight ratio as a Subaru BRZ/Toyota GT86, which I think are some of the most fun cars to drive. Maybe that’s some kind of sweet spot.

That engine is bolted to a seven-speed dual-clutch, direct shift gearbox that shifts better and faster than I ever could, but I still wish I had the option to shift my own gears. Oh well, that ship has sailed, and you can play with the paddles if you like, but I still think most people will do that the first month they have the car, then forget about them, because the gearbox does a fine job shifting on its own.

This edition of the GTI that I tested, the Autobahn edition, also has Volkswagen’s Dynamic Chassis Control (DCC) system, which adjusts the suspension damping and shock absorber stiffness at each wheel 1,000 times a second, though to be completely honest with you, when I drove it I felt like it was adjusting it at about 875 to 922 times per second, max. Maybe 950 times.

I’m kidding. I’m not sure I could tell you what it was doing, really. But I think I can give you some broad strokes about how this car feels to drive, if you’d like.

What It’s Like To Drive

It’s great. It’s fantastic. This car is an absolute blast to whip around with gleeful abandon, and that’s what I did. Yes, it has all kinds of dynamic chassis controls and adjustments and dampers and dampeners and driving modes and all that, but I’ll be completely honest with you: I didn’t bother messing with any of those settings or driving modes for two reasons: I don’t really know what I’m doing well enough to make a difference, and fundamentally, I don’t care about “driving modes.” I just like to drive the car how I want to drive it, and let the car figure it out. And the GTI did a brilliant job of that.

It’s quick, plenty quick, first of all. The throttle response is great, and when you smush that narrow pedal you get a satisfying lunge forward and some nice accompanying sounds. It’s not a big car, and that’s part of why it works so well. It feels nimble and taught, and the very direct-feeling steering and pleasingly Germanically-stern-feeling suspension all conspire to make you want to throw the thing around.

You’ll find yourself plotting courses through traffic and then executing your fast little weave-y labyrinthine path with delight. Maybe it helps encourage you to drive like a dickhead, but you’ll have a great time doing so. You’ll have more fun on curvy on-ramps as you throw it into the corner and get up to speed, fast, feeling the delicious sensation of the low, wide little hatch hugging that road, with just enough lean to keep it interesting.

You passengers, if they weren’t forewarned, may hit you with their purse.

Driving the GTI gives you such a nice feedback of speed and grip and shifting of weight that you’ll find yourself scanning the road around you for the Fun Bits. You absolutely can feel the difference between this and the crossovers and SUVs you may be usually saddled in. You’re a good couple feet lower to the ground, and that makes all the difference. You don’t feel like one of Hannibal’s soldiers perched atop a grumpy elephant, you feel like a watermelon seed pinched between damp fingers and launched, precisely, between people to smack your little brother in the back of the head.

You’re a crouching leopard in the GTI, and you’re winding around all the big dumb water buffalo around you, and it feels great.

But Is It Practical?

What? What kind of question is that, strawman I made up? Didn’t you pay attention to the whole beginning of this review? Yes! Yes, it’s practical? Jeez.

Look at the inside of that hatch up there. There’s plenty of room in there for all sorts of stuff! It’s barely any different from most mainstream crossovers! You could put like 80% of a large boar back there! Or a huge sheepdog and three duffel bags full of baby carrots, or whatever the hell it is you people haul around. Fold the 60/40 split back seat down, and you can get a sofa in there, if you don’t mind it hanging out of the back, which I definitely don’t mind, mostly because it’s not my sofa, and, if it is, what the hell are you doing with my sofa? I want my damn sofa back.

There’s a full-size spare in here, too, which is nice. Oh, and here’s a nice detail: when you lift the trunk floor, these little springy finger things grab it:

…so if you have to change a flat, this floor panel won’t keep falling on your head, annoying you on what is likely already a lousy night.

Look, there are some flares inset into the hatch, too.

Oh, also, VW seems to think you don’t know how to close a damn hatch, so they have this helpful bit of hieroglyphics. Use your hand! Ohhhhhhh! Thanks, VW. You know what I like about this hatch, though? It’s not powered. It’s just a hatch that you open and close with your own arms, like ha shem intended. Powered hatches always take too long to open and close for something I can just do, because I’m alive, dammit. Why add some bullshit that will just break, expensively, one day? This is fine.

How’s The Rest Of The Interior?

My kid Otto said the front seats look kind of like gaming chairs, and he’s not wrong. They do kind of look like gaming chairs:

They’re very comfortable, though, and that’s what matters. There’s also a decent amount of room in the rear seat as well, even for actual adults, and they get their own climate control and USB charging ports:

Heated rear seats, too! Honestly, even with its relatively diminutive size, this would make an excellent road trip car, I think.

This is an odd interior detail about modern VWs, too:

The hood opening lever is only revealed with the door open. You can’t open the hood when the door is closed. I guess this is a safety thing? I suppose there’s not much of a reason to open the hood unless you’re getting out of the car, so there’s that.

How’s It Look? And Tell Me About The Lighting!

It looks like a Golf GTI, which I think is a good thing. The fundamental Golf design sure has changed a lot since that first crisp-edged Giugiaro design back in the ’70s, but the changes have been evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary.

It’s gotten curvier, of course, a little lower and wider and bigger, but there’s still those fundamental Golf proportions and hatchback design that keep it grounded. It’s not a particularly ornate car, which works for it, but I’d like to note some nice lighting details that I think give it some nice jewelry.

Most prominent are these honeycomb/checkerboard/Purina logo/Rebel Alliance rank badge-style foglamps, which I think look great and add some real pop to the front end.

Combined with the illuminated badge and full-width DRL line, you have a very distinctive front end lighting graphic.

Around back, the taillights have a nice visual signature, too, looking a bit like the Hebrew letter resh, and, on the other side, a lowercase “r,” and, interestingly, both letters have the same sound.

The rear indicators are amber, I’m happy to note, too.

The puddle lights are supposed to evoke a golf ball, but I’m not sure I noticed that; even though the car is named “Golf,” for whatever reason I rarely associate it with golf, the way to ruin a good walk. Even the traditional dimpled shift knob of the GTI I never really associated with a golf ball, even if it looks just like one.

The side markers are interesting, in that the reflector portion (on the wheel arch) and the illuminated part (in the headlamp unit) are separate, which isn’t seen too often. While we’re here, we may as well appreciate those 19inch wheels and their five-petal design. These are good-looking wheels!

What About All the Electronic Stuff?

The 2027 GTI has all the usual stuff you’d expect from a modern car: wireless CarPlay/Android Auto, wireless charging, there’s some Level 2-ish like dynamic cruise features, but I’ll be honest, I didn’t try those because I was enjoying actually driving the car too much. Oh, the emergency-you’re-gonna-hit-something warning is a little too sensitive, I think, speaking of electronic nannies. Or ninnies.

VW’s controls aren’t too bad but they still have these maddening touch controls for volume and temperature control, and let’s be honest, they still suck. You can’t find them by touch, they take attention from driving, and there’s no tactile feedback worth anything. They need to just go back to a good, honest knob setup here.

On the plus side, the little button that makes the cupholder grab your beverage with its little Lego-person hand is pretty fun, though. What else does this thing have?

Look at this incredible ultrasound system that – oh wait – that’s from when they were checking my aorta sleeve. Remind me to delete this.

Oh, this is one sort of odd thing about the GTI; the car “sees” what’s around it and displays traffic on the instrument cluster screen in case you’re, you know, sick of looking out that big window in front of you. When I first noticed this part of the display, before I realized what it was, I could have sworn the car was showing me a picture of a refrigerator. I couldn’t figure out exactly why I was being shown a fridge, but there it was. Eventually I noticed the bus in front of me and it made sense, but it was an exciting few moments of confusion there.

There are four total USB-C ports, two in front, two in the rear, and plenty of colored mood lighting, which can be changed, so that’s fun.

How Much Do They Want For These?

The Autobahn version I was loaned goes for about $42,500, not counting fees and bribes or whatever, but the basic S version of the GTI starts at $34,600, which feels like a pretty reasonable price for what you get, which is a fun, practical car.

So, What’s The Verdict?

The verdict is exactly what you think: the GTI remains a fantastic way to combine practicality and genuine delight. It’s an absolute blast to drive, and, more importantly, it’s a blast to drive at not-absurd speeds on normal roads. Meaning it’s a daily driver that lets you decide, sometimes, to have a bit of fun and really enjoy how your car feels. You could autocross it when you felt like it, take it to an occasional track day and reduce the life of your tires, then drive it happily and relaxedly to work the next day.

It does lots of things well: practical, comfortable, decent room for people and stuff, good commuting in town (it gets a decent 24 mpg city/32 highway, though I saw 35+ MPG on more sedate highway trips; in town I drove like an idiot so 22-24 seems about right) and is a blast when you want it to be. There should be more GTIs and more hot hatches on the roads in general. There’s more fun to be had lower to the ground.

Top graphic image: Jason Torchinsky