Volkswagen Polo GTI 2018 first drive

In front of you, if you’ve paid extra for them, are VW’s Active Info Display digital instruments in new, second-gen form – which means, technically, that this car has a more advanced instrument pack than any Volkswagen Golf, Volkswagen Tiguan, Volkswagen Arteon or Volkswagen Passat. The car’s driving position feels promisingly low and purposeful for a compact hatchback, and you can’t quibble with the equipment available (6.5in touchscreen infotainment system standard, 8.0in as an upgrade) nor the car’s very impressive standard of perceived quality.

The Polo GTI’s engine starts and settles to an undemonstrative hum, and the car can be driven around in Comfort mode as easily as if it were a mid-range model. With those optional switchable dampers in their Normal setting, it rides smoothly and quietly, asks little of you in terms of steering weight and gets along without much drama or fuss. If it didn’t, you get the impression it wouldn’t get signed off as a modern GTI, because modern GTI drivers want the option, at times, not to be jiggled, wearied, bothered or asked to invest much in the driving experience of their cars.

Cycle into Sport mode, though, and things change a fair bit. The car’s sports exhaust doesn’t exactly bellow or zing, but it rasps with a certain crackling menace that serves as the right sort of accompaniment to the car’s brisk turn of mid-range pace. The steering’s got weight and feel now to match its carefully metered directness and precision, while there's a tautness and bite to the body control that wasn’t present before. Now we’re talking.

The GTI’s six-speed DSG gearbox has the familiar manual mode, in which it’s quick-shifting, and for the most part it gives you a dependable sense of close control over the driving forces going into the front axle both under power and on a trailing throttle. This is important in a fast front-driver, I’ve always thought. It won’t hold onto a gear at the very top of the rev range even in manual mode, though, shifting up automatically well short of the marked 6500rpm redline. And, even in manual mode, the kickdown switch at the bottom of the accelerator pedal’s travel isn’t frozen out from proceedings. One way or another, then, you can have shifts foisted on you in this car – which is a bit annoying and a mistake that it’s unlike VW to make.

Outright performance feels fast but doesn’t take your breath away; by and large, of course, fast superminis don’t – although some of them certainly rev more keenly than the Polo GTI above 5000rpm. Not many have more peak torque than this, however - something that allows the GTI to make short work of the meat of its rev range and makes it easier to drive quickly than most of its opponents.

The fact that its ride is fairly moderately tuned, supple even in Sport mode, also makes it particularly well suited to fast, undemanding road driving – although it doesn’t make it feel soft or inert on a tight racetrack. Here, VW’s investment in hardware gives the Polo GTI reserves of grip and composure, in both wet and dry conditions, that mark it out as a true driver’s car. You can lean on the car’s outside wheels as hard as you like through a fast bend without running out of handling balance; hustle the car into a slower one on trailed brakes and you can feel the rear axle arc gently but usefully wide to neutralise your cornering line. You can be needle-and-thread precise with the car, feeling for every available bit of adhesive asphalt; or you can bully it around a track, unloading the rear axle for fun and giving the brakes a really hard time, without fear of overheating them. They’re good brakes, and this is a thoroughly engineered performance car.

Just as on the Golf GTI, the Polo’s stability control system isn’t fully switchable, but the ESP-Sport mode gives you enough freedom to make for a really involving and unintruded track drive. It also just about reins in the inevitable spinning consequence of 236lb ft at the front wheels when you’re too keen with the accelerator pedal, although it does so pretty untidily at times.