Hot hatches like the Volkswagen Golf R and Cupra Leon are, sadly, a dying breed. Manufacturers can’t squeeze the profit out of them that they need to cover the expensive development costs of poor-selling electric cars. Add in the lack of ambition and petrolheads running the big companies and you get one bland crossover after another being signed off for production ahead of anything vaguely interesting. “It’s what customers want,” insist executives, who wouldn’t know a customer if they were slapped in the face by one and totally miss the painful truth that if all you ever market and push customers towards are these overpriced, overweight, oversized lumps, they won’t be aware of or buy anything else.
Advertisement – Article continues below
Anyway, some hot hatches still do make it out of the product strategy meetings such as the Toyota GR Yaris. The VW Group is still very happy to participate too, the excellent Mk8.5 Golf GTI 50th Edition demonstrating that talented and passionate engineers are still on the payroll and that healthy competition between the family brands still exists. The Golf R and Cupra Leon 333 4drive welcome every opportunity to square up to each other, just as they did in issue 342.
The EA888 four-cylinder turbocharged engine, four-wheel drive and double-clutch gearboxes might be shared between each model, but both have had very individual personalities dialled into them. The Cupra is more visceral and wears its character on its sleeve, the Golf R delivering a more sophisticated approach to being a seriously quick point-to-point hyperhatch. The last thing in hi-fidelity feedback? Possibly not, but they’re capable of thrilling all the same.
You can read Ethan Jupp’s verdict in issue 342, and when you have finished you’ll probably, like us, wonder why more manufacturers don’t continue to develop and sell such rounded, competent and engaging family hatchbacks. And even if a hot hatch isn’t right for all of their customers, the kudos of having one in the range might make them buy their anonymous SUV over a competitor’s.
