The director was most apologetic. But since we were filming the end of a
moving documentary about some soldiers in the second world war it would be
best if I was actually on location. Which was in Falmouth, which is in
Cornwall, which is as far as you can get from London without being in space.
Choosing what car to take was easy. I’m a huge fan of the Volkswagen Golf GTI
and parked outside was its brand new baby brother, the GT TSI. This may only
have a 1.4 litre engine but it’s boosted with the fitment of a turbocharger
and a supercharger. It sounded intriguing. It sounded like fun.
Choosing how to get there was not so simple. The M4, everyone said, is the
easiest route. This may be so, but it sure as hell isn't the fastest. These
days it’s a car park all the way to Maidenhead, and then afterwards, as the
traffic begins to ease, you have to slow down even more because they’ve
littered the hard shoulder with cones to make it look like there are some
roadworks under way. Pah! It’s just a ruse so they can impose a 40mph speed
limit, which they can then police with “safety” cameras.
By the time you get to Bristol you are either dead from old age or you’re on
foot because you’ve amassed so many points they've taken your licence away.
I therefore opted for the A303, but this quickly became boring so I started
to play with all the buttons. There’s one, near the gearlever, which is
marked with the letter W. Push it and a small light illuminates, but that’s
all.
All the way to Salisbury I prodded it, trying to find out what it did, until I
became so desperate I actually pulled over and broke the first rule of
manliness. I opened the glove box and — take a deep breath — took out the
handbook.
You want to know something weird? There was no mention of the W button in
there. I think it’s just been fitted to keep people occupied on long
journeys. So having decided there was no point trying to fathom the wilfully
unfathomable, I started to delve into some of the sub-menus on the satellite
navigation system.
There’s one that baffled me. It’s a compass, so you get an arrow that tells
you your direction of travel. Fine. But then you also get a dot that shows
the direction of your destination. What’s the point of that? In a plane it
might be useful because you can fly in a straight line. But in a car you
sort of have to go where the road goes.
Still, after approximately 14 weeks I arrived in Exeter, and that,
psychologically, is the end of the journey.
It isn’t, though, as people down there are only too happy to tell you. For
some reason, all petrol-pump attendants in this part of the world ask where
you’re going and then, when you tell them, they explain with a huge grin
exactly how long it will take you to get there. “Falmouth?” said the man at
the till, gleefully. “That’s another five hours!” Why do they do this? Why
does my misery make their day that little bit better? Small wonder they all
vote for the Liberal Democrats.
To make matters worse, I had one small stop to make in Dartmouth, which — said
the petrol man, before I punched him — would mean a three-hour detour.
He wasn’t joking. Devon, if it were a nation state, would be the biggest
country in the world. If it were a planet, it would dwarf Jupiter. And . . .
it . . . has . . . no . . . motorways. You wiggle about in single file,
behind a Liberal Democrat in a Rover, until you reach Torquay, which you
always thought had a New York postcode. And then you wiggle about some more
until the road goes straight into what is undoubtedly the sea.
It turned out that my stupid satellite navigation system had brought me to
Kingswear, which is on the way to Dartmouth, but only if you happen to be
driving Chitty Chitty Bloody Bang Bang. And I wasn’t, so I had to get a
ferry.
God, Dartmouth’s pretty. And so was the girl in Alf Resco’s who made me a
great breakfast, for lunch, and then, after I’d stared wistfully out to sea
— which is what you have to do when you’re making a moving documentary for
BBC2 — I hopped back in the Golf for a six-light-year thrash to Falmouth.
Falmouth, it turns out, is the only town in the whole of Cornwall that isn’t
called Coombe. I don’t know how many are listed in the atlas but I went
through 26 before reaching a place called Coombe, where an old lady reversed
into my car.
That livened things up a bit, but not as much as the sign I encountered on one
of the endless moorland roads between Coombe and Coombe. It was a red
triangle and in the middle was a picture of a bicycle.
What does that mean? That I should look out for bicycles? What, now?
Specifically here? At nine at night? And does this mean that in 10 miles, if
I run over a cyclist, I can sue the council for not warning me that he might
be there? It is the stupidest sign in Britain. It’s even more silly than one
I pass on the M40 most days that says “Spray possible”. Well yes, in heavy
rain, maybe. But in July? In a heatwave? What it should say then is “Spray
not possible”.
It turns out that Cornwall is full of signs, warning of your proximity to all
manner of things, none of which is Falmouth. And none of which makes any
more sense than the infernal W button in the car.
Ah yes, the car. Well, I was most impressed with the ride, but this, I think,
has more to do with the quality of the roads down there in the West Country.
Here, in England, we have to spend our money housing Albanian families while
their breadwinner is away in a prison that we also paid for. Whereas in
Cornwall they think Albania is some kind of skin disease, so they can afford
to iron every ripple in every road every morning.
On roads as good as this, the GT handles well too. But that’s it, I’m afraid,
so far as good news is concerned. The rest of it is rubbish. The headlamps
were set too high, so everyone coming the other way flashed me. The handle
that you pull to move the passenger seat fell off, and then there was the
truly woeful engine. It’s all very well having direct petrol injection and a
supercharger to fill in the black hole while the turbo girds its loins: this
is clever, but my God it’s jerky.
I like the power delivery of an engine to be smooth, like a ball bearing
rolling down a child’s playground slide. In the GT it’s delivered with the
smoothness of someone in a wheelchair falling down some stairs.
And where’s the power? If you’re going to stick GT badges on a car and claim
it delivers 168bhp, then kindly give us some oomph to match. Time and again
I had to change down on hills, and once, with my foot welded to the floor, I
was overtaken by a Mercedes van.
The worst thing, though, is that the GT TSI fails to do any of the things that
you might reasonably expect from a car. It doesn’t make the journey fun. It
doesn’t isolate you from the sensation of travel. And it isn’t especially
cheap. By the time I arrived in Falmouth I was fairly ready to push it into
the sea.
The following day, after a seven-hour drive back to London, up the M5 and
along the M4, I decided that it was one of the five worst cars I’d ever
driven. Yes, the journey, in the middle of the week, in the middle of
winter, was horrid. But it’s the job of a good car to take a trip like that
and make it better.
The Golf made it much, much worse.
Vital statistics
Model Volkswagen Golf GT TSI 3-door
Engine 1390cc, four cylinders
Power 168bhp @ 6000rpm
Torque 177 lb ft @ 1750rpm
Transmission Six-speed manual
Fuel/CO2 38.2mpg (combined) / 178g/km
Acceleration 0-62mph: 7.9sec
Top speed 136mph
Price £18,095
Rating 1/5
Verdict One of the five worst cars ever made
