The Golf GTI was unveiled in Frankfurt 34 years ago this month. If the ordinary Golf saved VW — ailing because Beetle sales were in long-term decline — then the GTI was the icing that made millions more want the cake. Planned as a limited edition of 5,000, it has gone on to sell 1.7 million worldwide (217,214 in the UK). Its effects spread well beyond itself. It wasn’t only that there were numerous buyers for the fashionable sporty version of what might otherwise have been seen as a humdrum hatchback (unpromisingly called ‘Rabbit’ in the US), but that the existence of this fashionable extra cast a glow of desire across the entire range. Celebrities such as the late Douglas Adams were given them on extended loan so that they could be seen in them. (I once had a lift in his but not with him and not, I fear, because my presence added a spark plug to its sales.)
And they weren’t just toys.
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