10 awesome hot hatchbacks for the price of a new Volkswagen Golf

Hatchbacks, much like days at the beach and very much unlike second-hand goods, are best when they’re hot. Sure, regular hatchbacks abound with all sorts of practicalities and make for exceptionally sensible purchases. But be honest: did conceptualising the previous sentence depress you as much as it did us?

A car is one of the few opportunities we have to buy something that satisfies our hearts as well as our minds. So only focusing on the rational – rather than rationalising the emotional – means missing a rare opportunity. And show us a soul who wouldn’t be disappointed by that.

The VW Golf was Britain’s sixth best-selling car last year, and the mere fact that base models still exist means that they weren’t all GTIs and Golf Rs. And we’re souls who are disappointed by that.

So, to stave off any future disappointment, we’ve set ourselves a goal: 10 hot hatches, each a perfect blend of rational and emotional in a way that only hot hatches can be, and each for less than £24,430 – the cost of an entry-level Volkswagen Golf.

If you possess the inclination to buy a Golf, congratulations! It’s been the answer to the eternal ‘What car should I get?’ question for about half an eternity now. And half an eternity is nearly as long as six true-crime podcasts.

If you possess the funds to buy a Golf, congratulations! That means you’ve not only weathered some pretty severe storms over the past few years, but you’ve managed to thrive, and should be congratulated. In fact, anyone who’s made it through the past few years deserves quite a measure of praise – excepting, of course, the people who made our lives that much more difficult, sending new trains down the rails to compound the series of train wrecks we’re already trying to deal with. You, and they, know exactly who they are.

But, as is seemingly contractually mandated, we digress. The point we originally intended to make was that for the cost of a new but rather mundane Golf, you could get a recent, low-mileage GTI. And if a Golf is generally the answer to ‘What car should I get?’, then the GTI is almost always the answer. Because of all the reasons we said in the first paragraph, innit.

The Mk7 GTI is, in the finest GTI tradition, an understated, practical and broadly timeless hatchback, a mix of performance and pragmatism that doesn’t overegg the recipe one way or the other. It’s up for city commuting, corner carving and countless motorway miles, and only the most extreme circumstances will take it out of its depth.

However, if this all sounds just too sensible for your liking, it is entirely possible to buy two early Mk7 GTIs for less than £24,000, keeping one for a daily driver and turning the other into a track day car.

Let’s say you like the idea of a German hatchback with some pace and panache, but the GTI just seems a little common, a bit middle of the road. Perhaps you’re descended from Redcoats and therefore view any tartan as treason. Maybe you’re one of those people that still calls front-wheel-drive ‘wrong-wheel-drive’. Maybe, in that case, you should stop.

In any case, the very German but very much quicker and rear-wheel-drive M140i is available for less than the cost of a new, not-even-GTI Golf. That means a 335bhp straight six, six-speed manual and rear-wheel drive. And as that list comprises the basic building blocks of a seriously entertaining time, consider the incredible fortune of finding such a drivetrain in a five-door hatchback, to say nothing of the fact you’re getting it for less than the price of a new boggo Golf.

Also, just in the interests of keeping you around a little longer, do go ahead and find one that has a limited-slip diff fitted or factor in about £2500 for fitting one. They were a factory option that, much like still saying wrong-wheel-drive, feels like a mistake that should have been corrected by now.

But let’s say that solid – and arguably stolid – German machinery just doesn’t have that je ne sais quoi you’re looking for. Well, the obvious answer here is to look to the same country of origin for both your phrasebook and your car.

The joy here (apart from the fact that the last-gen Megane RS was a superlatively entertaining thing) is that, for the kind of money we’re talking about, you’ll be able to find the absolute cream of the crop and still have thousands of pounds left over, for brakes and tyres and even an entire gallon of petrol.

Now, if you’re the canny and indeed slightly masochistic sort, there is the possibility of finding the extensively named and properly guano-crazy Megane RS 275 Trophy-R. It was the fastest front-drive production car around the Nordschleife when it was launched, taking just 7 minutes and 54 seconds to lap the Grune Holle. Obviously, the 275bhp 2.0-litre turbo was instrumental in that, but the wholesale shedding of creature comforts and resultant kerb weight of 1,280kg made the absolute most of it. What little remains bolted to the Trophy-R has all the right names and does all the right things: Recaro lightweight bucket seats, Ohlins suspension, Akrapovic titanium exhaust, Michelin Cup 2 tyres. Optional extras extended to a lightweight lithium battery, bigger brakes and six-point racing harnesses, in case the intent of the Trophy-R wasn’t already eminently obvious.

Before tracking down a Trophy-R, it’s worth considering how much rear seats, sound deadening, radio and air conditioning mean to you and indeed your regular passengers. Because driving under a cloud of barely contained disdain is not the most fun you’ll ever have in a motor vehicle. Just trust us on that one, and remind us to tell you why we sold our 147 GTA. But if you do clear (or indeed remove) these hurdles, you’ll have the ultimate expression of what’s arguably the best Megane RS ever.

Back in the comparatively simpler days of 2018, we took a Cupra R out to soggy Wales as part of a four-car group test with the then-new Civic Type R, i30N and Megane RS. And without even getting to the results of this little sojourn into Rob Brydon’s home turf, you’ll notice that there’s no fast VW Golf in the mix. And that’s not an oversight, either; we picked the Cupra from the vast Volkswagen group because it was the cream of the crop. And, being the practical people we are, that meant we were taking a presold, 1-of-24 limited edition model.

These impracticalities were instantly forgotten, however, the first time we planted our foot in third gear. We were heading uphill – and these are Welsh hills, by the way, each one a minor mountain – and were immediately floored by the sheer surge that was shooting us to the top of it. Having checked for errant locomotives and aircraft-carrier-spec slingshots, we could only surmise that the Cupra really was mustering all of that urge itself. So good was the Cupra’s engine, in fact, that it even had the measure of the superior-on-paper Civic Type R.

Now, you might be wondering what yet another personal anecdote about the jollies we get to go on in our capacity as automotive writers has to do with the standard Cupra 300. And, as questions go, it’d only be more fair if it had a sideshow and a Ferris Wheel. But here’s our point: the engine in the Cupra R is incredibly similar to the one in the Cupra 300. The Cupra R, being as limited as our understanding of quantum mechanics, is expensive for equally concocted reasons.

Let’s move on and try to assemble this random rambling into something of a point. And that point is that a Leon Cupra 300 has the power of a Golf R but, as a front-drive hatch, the weight of a Golf GTI. So it has a surge as devastating as... well, Uber’s surge pricing on New Year’s Eve. So it’s a faster, lighter, arguably better looking (other opinions are available) and, perhaps most importantly, differenter Golf GTI. So if you want to get where you’re going and back again in the time it takes us to get to the point, you could do far, far worse. 

Traction. To marketing and advertising types, it’s yet another buzzword to trot out, because apparently ‘people are viewing and responding to this’ is a bridge too far. To those with elbow patches, flat caps and hairy noses, it’s an old steam-powered tractor. For the rest of us, it’s... well, the obvious: good old-fashioned grip.

To a Focus RS driver, however, traction is generally ‘that thing I have more of than you’, thanks to a seriously tenacious all-wheel-drive system. As any number of drivers and indeed YouTube videos will tell you, grip is finite and the consequences of running out are far-reaching. It’s not just the all-wheel-drive system that’s responsible for the Mk3’s superlative grip – after all, we’re talking about Ford Europe suspension here – but it’s hard to say it doesn’t play a seriously important role. Like Idris Elba in The Wire.

Then again, in the Mk3 RS, having traction is really a matter of preference, thanks to 345bhp at any given moment, up to 345lb ft on overboost and a character that all but goads you into misbehaving. Even we – paragons of civility and sensibility that we are – were unable to resist the siren-like call.

Hello, and welcome to Technicality Corner! Here you’ll find such doozys as ‘We were on a break’, ‘NFTs are an investment’ and ‘Golf was at the Olympics so it’s definitely a sport’. Sure, champ. You get driven around a field in an electric buggy and have to hit a small ball as many as 80 times over the course of an afternoon, possibly while drinking beer and chatting to your mates. Next stop, triathlon.

Anywho, Technicality Corner also contains a doozy of our own creation: that the 928 is a hot hatch because it’s fast and has a hatchback. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

OK, we admit it’s an argument right up there with ‘work event’ in terms of sheer flimsiness. And if we were to continue with this logic, literally anything with a hatch on the back could get a pass – estates, SUVs, the Humvee M-1026. Possibly even chicken coops. But the fact remains that an all-aluminium Porsche V8, perfect 50-50 weight distribution and passive rear steering are every bit as appealing now as they were back in the 1970s, when the 928 debuted. The fact that it comes wrapped in a timeless shape – that also somehow manages to be perfectly of its time – is a technicality we’re more than willing to accept.

If there’s anything to get used to in the current Civic Type R... well, it’s the looks. But if there’s another thing to come to terms with, it’s the sheer distance-destroying pace. What used to be the preserve of all-wheel-drive monsters is now delivered via the medium of a front-wheel drive Honda hot hatch, proving that not everything in modern life is getting worse.

Speaking of delivery, there’s a not exactly inconsequential 316bhp delivered through the front wheels only. And we’re old enough to remember when getting more than 200bhp down in a front-drive hatch was sheer fantasy. So to make 316bhp such an untroubling event takes the kind of engineering we couldn’t even imagine without some form of aneurysm. But, almost in defiance of science, the Type R puts it all down, resulting in 60mph arriving in less than six seconds, in a manual, from a standing start. It also means a top speed of 169mph, should you find yourself in a place where laws and self-preservation will allow.

Yes, you’ll have to put up with a Hot Wheels exterior and Playstation-by-way-of-washbag interior. But the boy-racer looks belie some exceptionally grown-up engineering. And honestly, when you drive one the way it’s meant to be, it could look like an angler fish with a tribal tattoo and you’d still buy it.

Just how surprising is it to find that AMG – a company famous for its engines – would build a hot hatch that immediately shamed the power outputs of every other hot hatch on the market? Precisely.

While a two-litre four-cylinder is expected in a hot hatch, getting 355bhp out of it is rather less so. Largely because it was the most powerful four-cylinder engine ever built. Because AMG.

By the way, it’s worth remembering that the original A45 debuted nearly a decade ago. And, aside from the intense unease one feels when they realise a decade has gone past and they’ve not gone anywhere, this was back when power figures this big were still shocking.

OK, so the suspension had all the leniency of Australia’s Border Force and the all-wheel-drive system was dialled way too far to the sensible side of things for a car so unremittingly unsensible. But AMG kept tinkering with their tiny-but-mighty creation, tweaking the gearbox, suspension, exhaust and so on as it went along. Oh, and added more power. Because AMG.

Sometimes, the truly great are overlooked just because they have the misfortune to exist at the same time as the truly astonishing. How many great tennis players have languished outside the limelight that shone on Federer, Djokovic and Nadal? How many bands were just also-rans against the might of Floyd, Zeppelin and the Who? And how many of these are necessary for us to feel like we’ve made our point?

As you may expect, this brings us to the Peugeot GTi 270. At any other point than this deeply purple patch of hot hatchery, a handsome, lightweight hot hatch with 270bhp and a bona fide wild streak would see Peugeot make Scrooge McDuckian amounts of money. But it’s arrived when we have the Audi-AMG hyper hatches, a Civic Type R that rivals bullet trains for cross-country pace and uproariously fun hot hatches from Hyundai. Sure, that all makes perfect sense now, but imagine suggesting such competition in 2005. And that’s without even mentioning the all-things-to-all-people Golf GTI. Which we just mentioned.

So the 308 GTi, then. It’s a calm, perfectly comfy French hatchback, even when pushed. But then you push a little harder, and a little harder still. And you marvel at its ability. So you just bung it into a corner, with commitment severely outweighing confidence. And then you emerge, wearing anime eyes and a Joker smile, heart slamming against your ribcage and driven by a pathological urge to do it again. This is the hidden genius of the 308 GTi. But that rather suits a car that’s overlooked, doesn’t it?

As much as evidence would suggest otherwise, we’re realists. We recognise that those in the market for a regular hatchback are perhaps not swayed by ideas of lift-off oversteer, limpet-like grip and light-to-medium insanity.

What each buyer is looking for in their prospective hatchback is impossible to know for sure. For instance, a buyer could want a hatchback for its swim-up bar and 24-hour concierge, which a) illustrates the futility of assuming you know what someone else is thinking, and b) suggests that they’ve definitely misread something at some point in their research.

With that said, if they’re looking at a standard Golf hatchback, notions of practicality, solidity and unpretentious styling are likely in the mix somewhere. Perhaps between the double-tracked vocals and the Precision bass. No, below the Rhodes. Look, just give us the mouse, we’ll do it.

In any case, it stands to reason that there’s a buyer who’d love the power, pace and performance of a hot hatch, just without all the overt styling, sounds and so on. And really, the Golf GTI does fit the bill. But the Audi S3 rides in on a bill with a fancier letterhead, which it fits every bit as well as the GTI. Possibly because the Golf and A3 are of course related, but also because the ethos of the S3 is a natural extension from the Golf GTI. Where the GTI covers all bases, the S3 declares that baseball is beneath it and retires for an aperitif at a classy cocktail bar. So it won’t play like the GTI, but will feel fancier. And even among hot hatches, there’s something to be said for that.