The 911 Of Hot Hatches Takes The Compact Game To New Levels

The 93-pound lighter Mk7 GTI will do 0-60 in 6.4 seconds.

The traditional Jacky plaid sport fabric on the seats has been evolved into a new pattern dubbed Clark.

VAQ alone can peel off eight seconds from a perfect GTI lap of the Nürburgring.

No factory-issue Golf has ever come this far in extending our abilities. Not even an R32 or present Golf R.

North American car buyers get a bit of a slap in the face when it comes to delivery schedules for new the Volkswagen Golf and pumped-up GTI models . We'll just repeat the old chestnut: It's worth the wait... even though it still stinks. This time around, Western Europe is taking deliveries of the new Golf as we speak, and GTI deliveries start between May and July. North America doesn't get the Mk7 Golf or GTI until about July of 2014.So we approached our first drive of the new GTI with this chip on our shoulder: "You're making us wait? Well, then at least give us the exact car we'll be able to buy. No compromises, mein freund." And so it was that we extracted nearly all of our drive impressions from behind the wheel of what, for the United States, will technically be a model year 2015 two-door Volkswagen Golf GTI Performance with the standard six-speed manual.This time around, Volkswagen in Wolfsburg and in Herndon, VA, explain the wait in very practical terms. Whereas before it was just a long wait while Volkswagen slowly realized it needed to properly invest in North America, the wait this time is because VW needs to get its Puebla, Mexico, factory completely on-line to build all of North America's Golfs and GTIs . The deadline for this happening is... July 2014. We're still gonna whine about it though, because that's how we roll.For the Mk7 GTI, power from the iron-block EA888 2.0-liter TSI four-cylinder versus the Mk6 GTI still on sale is up 10 percent to 217 horsepower between 4,500 and 6,200 rpm, and peak torque is up 51 pound-feet – almost 25 percent – to 258 lb-ft between 1,500 and 4,400 rpm. The outgoing GTI accelerated to 60 miles per hour in an estimated 6.8 seconds while the now 93-pound-lighter Mk7 GTI riding on its all-new MQB architecture will do the deed in 6.4 seconds.At least in North America, the GTI thus cracks a special mental barrier regarding curb weight. By losing those 93 pounds of love handle, the Mk7 GTI in two-door trim with a manual transmission gets back down below 3,000 pounds to 2,941, despite being longer and wider than the Mk6. Almost all of the weight loss can be attributed to VW exploring ever thinner gauge high-strength steels for both the sheetmetal and all of the main joinders of body and chassis, the goal being to lose weight while gaining strength and stiffness.The traditional Jacky plaid sport fabric on the supportive sport seats has here been evolved into a new pattern dubbed Clark, and the standard 18-inch wheels for the Mk7 are a new design called Brooklyn, instead of the current model's standard Detroit-style alloys. Through the ceaseless curves of the southern French Alps, where we are all World Rally Championship drivers, both the chairs and Bridgestone Potenzas wrapped around the Brooklyns did their jobs without a hitch. They have some important little helpers in the Mk7, and it's these aids that take the new GTI to a place where no other front-wheel-drive hot hatch can tread with such overwhelming confidence.The base car with standard progressive steering and VW's latest XDS+ electronic limited-slip action is a solid setup. The electronically assisted steering with 2.0-turns from lock to lock is weighted nicely and pleasingly precise. Critically, XDS+ goes one step further from its Mk6 XDS iteration. Instead of augmenting handling by reacting only through the brakes and stability control system, it can be proactive in off-brake moments where added front-end control is deemed desirable. Thus, it will still apply light braking to the inner wheel during dynamic driving as you approach the next curve, yet it will also assist even without any steering angle input when needed on all types of road surfaces – including snow.But... but, we had the Mk7 in Performance trim for the meat of this test, an option setup that figures to cost somewhere around $1,200 extra over the projected $24,700 base price tag. The package includes larger-diameter, internally vented brake discs gloved by pretty red calipers stamped with a white "GTI," 10 more horsepower, a maximum