As much as I like German cars, other nationalities do exist. German carmakers have a habit of pretending they invented everything. Back when it launched the M-Class, Mercedes-Benz called it the first luxury off-roader. But what about the Range Rover or the Jeep Wagoneer? Both of them instantly erased from history.
Audi laughably said the A5 Sportback was the first of its kind. However, the Mondeo Ghia wasn’t all that premium, but it was a good car and it sat among a field of about two dozen other five-door fastbacks the same size.
BMW called the X6 the first coupe-SUV, which ignored the 2005 SsangYong Actyon, which might have been a crapbox but was also the first—as far as I know.
Volkswagen doesn’t have to brag about its Golf GTI being the first hot hatch. The carmaker can actually step back and count on the rest of us make that claim. “It’s considered the original in its class,” said in a booklet published to mark 50 years of racing and sporty Golf history. We’re guilty as charged, and we’re like a stuck record—the Volkswagen Golf GTI was the first hot hatch.
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Of course it stays in the memory, because VW has been faithful to the format ever since, bringing out a new GTI pretty promptly with each generation of Golf. And we’re up to eight now. Its rivals have been far less consistent in maintaining their lines, dipping in and out of hot-hatch sales with succeeding crises of insurance, theft, or other general bouts of consumer nerves. So yes, the Golf remains top of mind and we perceive it as the patriarch.
Except of course it wasn’t. Some weeks before the Golf GTI reached its first buyers, Renault started selling its 5 Alpine. It wasn’t injected but was ‘hotted’ up, and had stripes. That said, the Golf hit one milestone first, as it appeared at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 1975, before the Renault.
Anyway, we can go back further. The Simca 1100 is these days a forgotten car from a forgotten brand, but it was a colossal seller across Europe in the early ’70s, and the twin-carb Ti version from 1974 has a reasonable claim to be an earlier hot hatch. Then again, one could dig back further, to the 1971 Autobianchi A112 Abarth.
These are just the ones with FWD and an actual rear hatch, disbarring the two-door Mini Cooper or the RWD BMW 2002 Touring. But history is written by the winners.
NOTE: This story first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
