By the turn of the new Millennium, the Golf GTI had bloated into a very different beast indeed. After the Corrado was killed off in 1995, everfaster yet lardier Golfs took its place. Some sported five- or even six-cylinder engines, but their weight, luxury and price left them a far cry from the 840kg 1.6-litre flyweight that dropped jaws back in 1975.
While the latest hot hatches push ever further into supercar-worrying power figures, Clayton Jones’s meticulously track-honed Lupo is a giant-felling advocate for sticking to the old-school formula.
