Volkswagen Golf GT 2008 Review

Steam is blowing out my ears. I'm stomping around in my house, swearing and cursing. My children are cowering in the corner. My wife is trying in vain to placate me.

I hate being a cranky old man. And the older I get the crankier I get.

Of course, there is good reason for this fit of pique.

We live in a very quiet neighbourhood, it's Sunday afternoon and it's time for my nana nap, but a toy dog two blocks away is having conniptions and keeping me awake.

See, I told you it was important.

Actually, I lied a little. My children are not cowering, they are telling me to settle down and stop being a cranky old man and my wife has long given up trying to placate me.

However, there is steam blowing out my ears.

Little things upset me greatly, sparking self-righteous anger.

These, of course, are good character traits for car testing.

Recently I spent some time in a $131,900 Audi S5.

I should have been happy in this expensive, high-powered, luxury sports coupe, but instead I was annoyed by a creak in the door. Annoyed to distraction. Steam blew out my ears.

This often happens. One niggling little problem with a car spoils the whole vehicle. And I'm sure I'm not alone.

There must be other grumpy old men out there whose whole day is spoilt by a yapping toy dog two blocks away and a niggling squeak in their expensive new car.

But after a week driving around in the VW Golf GT Sport TDI, there is no steam coming out my ears.

If I was asked what car I would buy — and I often am — the answer would be simple. It would be this beautiful German hatch.

There is simply nothing that caused me annoyance.

I even got over the slight turbo lag.

There is a trick to getting around it. Just don't bury your foot into the firewall; coax the throttle and change up quickly with the world's greatest production car transmission, the Direct Shift Gearbox, also found in expensive Audis.

Expense also didn't cause any annoyance. It costs $39,790, which isn't too bad for the world's best small car.

And I wasn't even annoyed that with all the extras this car was fitted with (read the options list in the tech specs) that price jumped over $50,000.

After all, that's a lot cheaper than an S5 and there is no steam blowing out my ears.

The new TDI is an absolute joy to behold, to drive, to sit in, to steer, to thrash and then to fill up.

Just look at the figures.

The standard TDI has 103kW of power, 320Nm of torque and drinks diesel at a rate of 6.1L/100km with the DSG and 5.7 in the manual.

However, the GT Sport TDI has new injectors and a few engine tweaks that make it VW's most powerful four-cylinder TDI engine; with an output of 125kW at 4200rpm and even more excitingly 30Nm more torque at just a few hundred revs over idle.

The offset for this performance boost is only slightly worse economy figures of 6.3L/100km (DSG), 6.6 (manual).

But notice it is actually more economical with the world's greatest production car gearbox?

And right in front of the driver on the instrument panel is a readout for the average mileage (why do we still call it mileage when it should be kilometreage?).

This is like a red rag to a bull, or in this case, a red instrument readout to a grumpy old man.

It beckons you to play the game of "See how low you can get this figure.”

And what a fun game it is. By using some old Hans Tholstrup techniques, such as envisioning an egg under the accelerator, I have been trying all week to drive down the kilometreage. My record was 5.2 in moderate 6.30-7am commuter traffic.

Normally the commute would have me blowing steam out my ears because of other drivers' behaviour or because I'd swapped lanes and picked the one held up by a smoke-belching BCC bus.

Instead, I was having a hoot driving down the kilometreage.

So I parked the car at work, folded in the key on the fob, locked it, stood back and admired the GT once again, before heading inside for the daily grind.

It looks very much like its sporty brother the Golf GTI, which costs $1000 more.

They share the same sports suspension, tasty 17-inch alloy BBS ClassiXs wheels, wide 225mm tyres, strong 16-inch brakes, the same bumper and radiator grille design, twin tailpipes, sports seats and sports steering wheel.

Yep, this is certainly a sporty car that rewards driver input, yet still has great fuel economy if driven judiciously.

Then I got to thinking how the State Government was now raking in almost $400 more in stamp duty on each one of these sold this year after it increased the rate from 2 to 3 per cent.

Yet it leaves the rate at 2 per cent for cars like the $233,000 V8 Lexus LS 600hL simply because it's a trendy hybrid.

The Lexus drinks fuel at 9.8 litres a kilometre, which is pretty good for a V8 and better than a V6 Commodore.

However, it's a long way behind the Golf which gets slugged with extra stamp duty from a government that allegedly made the tax changes to encourage people into more economical cars.

Better start cowering, children, cause these ears are about to blow.

Snapshot

VW Golf GT Sport TDI

Price: $39,790

Body: 5-door

Engine: 2-litre, 4-cylinder turbo-diesel

Power: 125kW @ 4200rpm

Torque: 350Nm @ 1750-2500rpm

Transmission: 6-speed direct shift gearbox

Acceleration: 0-100km/h 8.2sec

Economy: 6.3l/100km combined

Fuel: diesel, 55-litre tank

Emissions: 168g/km, Euro 4

Weight: 1410kg

Options: satellite navigation and CD changer $3780, electric sunroof $1890, bi-xenon headlights $1890, leather upholstery $2990, rear parking sensors $790, anti-theft alarm $590