A short history lesson: The VW Golf GTi is a legend. The MkII model - along with Peugeot’s 205 GTi - introduced to the world the concept of a ‘Hot Hatch’ in the late 80’s and early 90’s. A small, nimble car with enough performance to humiliate the £100k supercars on real-life country roads. Ford soon followed suit with various versions of Escorts and Sierra Cosworths, and so on. At some point during that time VW also created the ‘Scirocco’, which despite being fairly popular never really had the same kind of fame or reputation as the Golf GTi.

All of a sudden, along came a new VW Scirocco - the first for nearly 20 years. In their excitement, VW ‘accidentally’ made it noticeably better than the Mk5 Golf GTi, a car still revered as being the definitive ‘Hot Hatch’. Frankly, being ‘accidentally’ better than a Golf GTi is like ‘accidentally’ finding a cure for cancer, or ‘accidentally’ achieving world peace. It’s a huge deal. Anyway, VW realised they just kicked themselves in the nuts, and quickly designed the new Mk6 Golf and Golf GTi, deliberately making it even better than the new Scirocco so that VW could keep their flagship car. And ‘flagship model’ translates in human speak to ‘best of the breed’.

So, the new VW Scirocco R - a Scirocco bred by motorsport (a 24 hour Le Man’s-style racing series no less), with as much power as a Porsche Cayman and a pricetag matching the new Ford Focus RS. Once again VW has kicked themselves in the nadgers. In fact this car is so fast that you’ll never guess how they officially revealed the car. At a motor show? A press conference? No. Via a 24 hour racing series at the famous Nurburgring circuit in Germany, highlighting this car’s awesome performance and motorsport pedigree. So after all that effort to make a new VW Golf relatively prematurely (the Mk5 is only a few years old, mind!), VW have just ruined all that by making a much faster Scirocco. VW’s only hope is that the much-rumoured successor to the Golf R32 is even better. Personally I hope not. I like the Scirocco too much.

The new car sports a more aggressive bodykit than the standard car, with angular new side-skirts and racey new bumpers, sexing up an already gorgeous car. Think of it as changing it from Hugh Grant to Vin Diesel, if you know what I mean. The ‘Donington’ alloys on the standard car have been scrapped for new ‘Talladega’ alloys, which I think is a shame as the Donington alloys were very attractive and very similar to the alloys on the McLaren SLR; a £300,000 vehicle.

There are also changes inside, too. The standard sciroccos had a dashboard that was very typically ‘Golf’ish, and the party pieces were those gorgeous leather seats based on those in the old 1980’s Scirocco (and indeed many other classic cars). This time they’ve gone for something much more modern and racey.

Those blue dials? They glow red when they hit the redline. A luminous ‘R’ logo sits at the base of each gauge. A revised steering wheel with an ‘R’ logo on the base, and a graphically enhanced computer system in the centre console. Even the seats (not pictured, sadly) are sportier and better looking than the old ones. This car does its best to tell you that this is a sporty, feisty, lemme-at-’em racer.

Power goes up from 200bhp to 261bhp, giving a 0-60mph time of 6.4 seconds and a top speed electronically limited at 155mph. Remove the limiter and you’re probably looking at 165-170mph. That’s Porsche Boxster acceleration, and Porsche Cayman territory if you don’t mind losing your driving licence. But actually it’s target is much more humble than Porsche. This is gunning for the Ford Focus RS, which has slightly more power, is a little faster to 60mph and has the same top speed. But the Focus also has a LOT more handling problems - all that power at the front wheels means lots of wheelspin and jerky steering caused by ‘torque steer’. This has none of that, giving you more confidence in both the car’s abilities and your own, resulting in performance easily matching the Focus RS.

Of course, everything I just said is all words. This car won’t actually hit dealerships until much later this year, going on 2010, so we won’t know precisely how good it is until then. But the silver lining is it gives our bank managers plenty of warning!

Last one to get onto the reserve list is a rotten egg…