The Volkswagen Golf has long been the performance hatchback of choice, but part of its appeal has arguably bean its reasonable – if not exactly cheap – price tag.
Golfs are generally thought to inhabit the £17k price bracket, but the new Gold R 3dr manual comes with an asking price of £29,900 – and that's just for the entry-level machine.
So what makes the boffins from Wolfsburg think we'll part with an additional £13k for this version?
Auto pundits are seeing this Golf as something of an ultimate hatchback, with acceleration, speed and handling that would have been ‘de rigeur’ in an Italian sports car of twenty years ago – but today, you can have that performance for just 30 grand.
Of course, it doesn't look like a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, but you can't have everything.
What you do get is four wheel drive, and access to all 280lb per ft of torque in the early stages of the rev range, giving this Golf a real sense of sporty urgency.
A bulkhead resonator means that you'll be able to enjoy the engine noise on the inside at least as much as people do on the outside.
As well as being praised for its super-soft ride over bumps and dips, this Golf has won fans because it is, like all Golfs, a very useable everyday car, too.
With such sporty credentials, it’s perhaps surprising that such reasonable mpg figures are on offer; around 30mpg on the motorway, with twisty-turny hatchback-style driving bringing that figure down to around 25.
The car also ticks all boxes for speed-lovers: the top speed of 155mph has been limited; and only VW knows what the machine can really do.
And with such epic German reliability, you'll probably only ever call on your breakdown insurance provider because of an empty tank – an easy thing to overlook given the amount of fun this car is.
Breakdown Cover from 
