This is a car that is a design icon following on from many other design icons, eight and a half to be precise.

This is the new Golf, not only the new Golf, it's the new Golf GTI and like many of its predecessors beforehand, may be one of the most significant cars to roll out of the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg.

For one very good reason, hear that noise?

Yep, just like all the other reviews, that might be disappearing soon.

Hello, you're watching Driven, my name is John Markar and this is the Volkswagen Golf

GTI Mark 8.5.

So, 8.5 generations of Golf GTI, that in itself is enough worth celebrating.

But before we do, why don't we have a little recap on the story so far of one of the most iconic cars in the world and of course, one of the most iconic tuning brands, the Golf

GTI.

The first ever Volkswagen Golf came along in May 1974 as a successor to the Volkswagen

Beetle.

It was styled by the Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro.

In a stark contrast to the Beetle, the new small car from Volkswagen had a front mounted water cooled engine and a very boxy shape, which was a new and some say, risky direction for Volkswagen.

Once the Golf had proven to be a success, a small committee of Volkswagen employees led by the head of press, Anton Conrad, decided a sportier version might be a strong seller.

One of the group, a marketeer by the name of Horst Deutersz-Wielinski, carried out some market research and came up with the Golf GTI name, with GTI being short for Grand Tourer

Injection.

Designer Gunnhild Lilliquist, the first woman to join the team, is credited with creating many of the GTI's best loved features, such as the tartan interior and the golf ball gear knob.

The very first Mark 1 Golf GTI came with 108 horsepower, a four speed manual transmission and weighed in at 810kg, resulting in a 0-62 acceleration time of 9.2 seconds and a top speed of 113mph.

In 1975, that was seriously impressive.

In 1984, the Mark 2 Golf GTI arrived with a bigger and boxier look, taken from the already existing Golf Mark 2.

The GTI had some new features like dual headlights and a rear spoiler, and it was powered by a new four-cylinder engine with a five-speed gearbox, giving similar acceleration to the predecessor despite being 180kg heavier.

The Golf GTI 16 valve then arrived in 1987 with a 0-62 time of 8.9 seconds and a top speed of 130mph.

The 1990s arrived and with it, so did the Mark 3 Golf GTI, which represented the end of the classically styled GTIs.

The new model, the Mark 3, had a curved shape and was deemed slightly less exciting by the fans.

It was also slightly heavier, but thanks to an engine upgrade with a 16 valve producing 148 horsepower, this saw an improved top speed of 134mph and a 0-62 time of 8.7 seconds.

Things got a little more confusing when the Mark 4 Golf GTI came along in 1997, as it was now essentially a sporty trim version of the Golf rather than an entirely separate model.

Gone were the red stripe and GTI badging on the grille, but now it was available with a wider variety of engines, including the diesel-powered GTI TDI, which many would later argue wasn't ever a GTI at all.

A 25th anniversary edition of the Mark 4 was released in 2001 with a more powerful 20-valve four-cylinder engine and an aggressive body kit.

Then came the return of the classic golf ball gear knob, something the fans of the classic

GTIs had yearned for.

Having heard and listened to the groans from the press and consumers from the Mark 4, the

Mark 5 Golf GTI returned in 2003 as a clear and concise GTI model.

The Mark 5 had a new 16-valve four-cylinder engine delivering a 0-62mph sprint in 7.2 seconds, and classic elements like the red stripe, the GTI badging and the tartan upholstery as seen in the original Golf GTI had returned.

Performance was the focus of the Mark 6 Golf GTI, which arrived in 2008.

Racing driver Hans-Jochen Stuck was added to the development team to help get the GTI back to its original motorsport performance brief.

The Mark 6 had a new electronic differential, giving the car incredible grip.

The new car's 0-62 time was 6.9 seconds and its top speed was almost 150mph.

And thanks to a new twin sports exhaust, a new soundtrack, it sounded better and more purposeful.

A special edition called the Edition 35 was created to celebrate the GTI's 35th anniversary.

It completed its first outing at the Nürburgring clocking in an impressive 8 minutes 38 seconds lap time.

Production of the Mark 7 Golf GTI began in spring 2013 and it was launched with two different engines.

The basic GTI had 217hp and the Golf GTI Performance had 227hp.

This was powered by a 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol engine and was the first Golf GTI to go past the 150mph speed limit thanks to a 42kg weight cut.

In 2016, whilst in the Mark 7 era, Volkswagen launched the Golf GTI Club Sport S to mark the 40th birthday of the model.

It introduced an aluminium subframe and disposed of the rear seats, helping to achieve a lap time at the Nürburgring Nordschleife of 7 minutes and 49 seconds.

That was a new record for front-wheel drive production cars at the time.

Orders for the Mark 8 GTI opened in the autumn of 2020.

The new car offered aluminium subframes and stiffer suspension as seen on the predecessor and a new vehicle dynamics manager that adjusted all running gear functions up to 200 times a second, making it the most responsive GTI yet.

In a throwback to the classics, the Mark 8 had a single red GTI line above the headlights and, for the first time in its history, the GTI was only available as a four-door car.

The 45th birthday of the GTI was honoured with the release of the GTI Club Sport 45, which featured some beautiful styling cues and even a Nürburgring driver mode setting.

But now we have a new Golf to talk about.

And we are back in 2024 with the latest iteration of the Golf GTI, the 8.5.

Now the very observant of you, and especially those of you watching this in 4K, may notice that this car is quite dirty.

There are lots of dead bugs on the windscreen, there's a little bit of bird poo there, and it's splattered with dead bugs on the front.

And there's a good reason for that.

That's because this exact car, along with myself and photographer Henry, have just returned from a 1,500 mile road trip from the Volkswagen headquarters in Milton Keynes here in the over to the Volkswagen headquarters in Germany in Wolfsburg for the GTI Fan Festival.

Now that is a completely separate video all in itself, and also is the first ever attempt at vlogging that we have done here at Driven.

Now without giving too many spoilers, I'm going to preface the title of that video, which may already be live.

It's called Probably the Worst Automotive Vlog Ever, because we simply forgot to carry on filming once we got to Wolfsburg.

But hey, doesn't matter, have a watch, see what you think.

If you like the style of where it's going, tell us and we'll do more.

But anyway, back to the subject in hand, the new Golf GTI Mark 8.5.

A very, very, very, very significant car for many reasons.

Right, so the 8.5.

It's probably worth now mentioning what's different from the 8.

Now if you're familiar with Volkswagen Golfs and familiar with the life cycle in which they progressed, then you'll be all too aware that more often than not, what you get is a Mark and then a 0.5, and that is, as many manufacturers do, a mid-life upgrade.

So there's a few little changes, usually styling and a bit of power, and that's exactly what this one has got.

So a smidge more power, we've got 20 more horsepower than the previous Mark 8, and that rewards a slightly better acceleration time from 0 to 60 of 5.9 seconds.

Previously, that was 6.3.

The 20 horsepower upgrade results in 261 horsepower, so that's up from 240-ish before, and whilst it's not a huge big difference, it's enough to be a bit of a selling point, I guess.

The other main changes all refer to styling.

So if we look at the front of the car, we have a slightly adapted and redesigned front bumper with, I'm going to say it, some of the best fog light design I have ever seen.

I usually get really grumpy when I see people driving along in broad daylight, no fog, and they've got their fog lights on.

Your fog lights are off, there's no fog.

There's no fog.

No fog.

But this, when the fog lights are on, it looks so good.

So I would actually be tempted to be a bit of a moron and drive around with my front fog lights on.

We also have new headlights.

These are the ID LED Matrix headlights, which, Volkswagen say, illuminate things up to half a kilometre away.

And then on the subject of lights, the entire front grille now lights up, and so does the badge.

I don't know why, but it does.

And at the back of the car, it's a similar story.

We have redesigned rear lights, which I think are very nice, and a slightly tweaked rear bumper.

All in all, making this, in my genuine opinion, a very, very good-looking car.

And along the side, we've got some new wheels.

Come and have a look at these.

New wheels.

These 19-inch wheels are affectionately called the Richmond.

Hi, guys.

Editor's note.

So those aren't Richmond wheels.

Those are Queenstown wheels, and they will cost you an extra £1,270.

And there are additional options that you can pick on the configurator.

We've also got a slightly confusing new location for the GTI badge.

I think maybe it would be better there, but that's just my opinion.

But subject to configurator, it's probably worth mentioning the price, because this new 8.5 does have a fairly big price tag, with prices starting at £38,900 before options.

If you then do want to put some additional options on, things like slightly different wheels, a sunroof, some interior comfort options, upgraded sound, for example, then that price does very quickly grow.

And having a little play just now on the configurator, I managed to get a price tag of just under £45,000.

So at that point, this does become quite competitive with things like the Civic Type R. It might not be the last time you hear me refer to that car in this video.

Let's hop in, and I will talk you through some of the interior changes, the interior adaptations, and then we'll go for a drive, just like that guy.

Inside the car, we have a number of new features, first of which is this big screen.

It's a 12.9-inch touchscreen, which is a fairly big upgrade from the previous model.

I don't necessarily know that we need 12.9, or let's just round it up, 13 inches worth of screen.

But as well as the screen being bigger, it has been given some new software, and it's supposedly a lot more intuitive, smoother, easier to navigate.

As you would expect, it has, of course, got CarPlay, so you can do things like listen to your favourite podcasts.

You can listen to Spotify, you can use Waze, Google Maps, all the usual stuff.

But then, of course, there is a good, healthy dose of inbuilt navigation systems from the home screen.

And one additional feature, which I am as yet undecided on whether or not I like, and that is ChatGPT, artificial intelligence listening to you in the car, so that you can supposedly do things like control the car in a more human way.

For example, if I just start the car up, and then I hit this button, it is unbearably hot today and I really wish that I could be much cooler.

Sorry, I don't know how to do that yet.

So as we can see, it's not quite perfect.

It will, I'm sure, get better with time.

Just press buttons.

On the subject of buttons, there is one other massive new upgrade in this car which is from the past, and that is the steering wheel.

The haptic buttons that me and just about every other motoring journalist and consumer and buyer and hire car user and anybody that sat in a Volkswagen product with haptic controls on the steering wheel have moaned about, complained about, and they've gone.

The real physical buttons have come back.

So you could say, in essence, that this steering wheel is, it's probably been pulled out of the parts bin from the Mark 7.

But I do think that is a good thing because genuinely, the old one, if you just rest your hands on the wheel, if you turn the wheel, you were doing things like putting the volume up, you were changing radio stations, doing all sorts of things you didn't want to do.

There are still a couple of haptic buttons still remaining just at the very bottom of the screen here for quick adjustments to climate control or volume, but they do illuminate.

You can see them at night, which previously you couldn't, and therefore will let those ones stand.

The last buttons to mention, we have a really handy little panel here.

This has been brought across from the previous model, but I can cycle through my driver's modes here.

So for things like eco, for standard, for sport, that sort of thing, a quick reference to climate control, which is always a good thing.

Thank you, Volkswagen, for giving quick references to climate control.

Any manufacturer that puts that and buries it into the internal system can get in the sea because that is an utterly pointless, annoying thing.

And the other really good thing that they've done is they've put an assist button here as well.

It's not working for me at the moment because the ignition's off, but that allows me to very quickly turn off things like the speed alert warning systems that all manufacturers have to do now in Europe.

When you get over the speed limit, it bings and bongs and tells you you're speeding, and it's really, really bloody annoying.

But luckily, Volkswagen have made it nice and quick and easy to turn that off.

And the last thing I need to refer to, which is a change from the previous model, is down here, and that is the gear selection, which of course indicates that this is a DSG car.

Manual gearboxes in the UK, and I believe most of Europe, are no longer an option for the 8.5.

From this point onwards, it is all DSG gearboxes, and I think it's only the United States of

America that, for some reason, get the manual gearbox in the latest iteration in the 8.5.

I'm not going to complain about it, though, because genuinely, I think the DSG in here is fantastic, and I will tell you more about that now as we go for a drive.

This is a proper, proper driver's car, and I genuinely mean that.

This is a hot hatchback, as they have done.

Volkswagen, with the first-ever edition of the GTI, the Mk1, way back in the 1970s, 1976, they kind of shocked the entire world with their creation.

They'd invented a small, conventional hatchback, but thrown in some special spicy sauce to make it fun and engaging and a bit daft, and that mantra has basically continued throughout the Volkswagen Golf GTI's life, all the way up to where we are here in the 8.5, and that is just brilliant.

That Mk1 was a car that was fast, genuinely fast for 1976, but also comfortable, usable, practical.

You put your mates in the back, you fill the boot full of luggage, and drive that car every single day if you wanted to, in exactly the same way as you can with this, the 8.5 from 2024.

There are, admittedly, other models of hot hatchbacks available on the market that will reward a slightly more engaging drive.

The Honda Civic Type R is a perfect example of that.

The Honda Civic Type R is a little bit lighter, it does turn into corners a little better, and it does also reward a slightly more exciting and engaging driving experience.

However, that does come with a compromise, and the compromise is road noise and ride comfort.