I went to the VW dealership to finally see the new Scirocco GT in the metal, and to book a test drive to find out what’s what. The petrolhead world is already buzzing with news of how it’s better than the Golf GTi, and that it’s the best looking VW ever made in the last 10 or 20 years, and so on. All the hype had me drawing up various assumptions about what the car would be like. But bloody hell it was far from what I expected. Unfortunately my surprise was cut short of actually driving it - that will come in another article later on. But what I did get to experience really surprised me, which is why I feel compelled to write about it now, and not in a week’s time.

When you look at the car in magazines and such, you can be forgiven for thinking of it as a cheap(ish) 3-door hatchback. It has a large hatch-style boot and room in the back for kids. The rear legroom isn’t great, but then neither is the rear legroom in my 206, and if anything the rear legroom in the Scirocco is more than what my small 206 offers. So it ticks the basic hatchback boxes, but beyond that it’s an entirely different animal. For one, it’s huge. It sits much lower to the ground than it’s main rival the VW Golf, and it’s considerably wider too. Those differences make it much better to drive - it’s sharper and more agile than the Golf and much easier to drive too, or so everyone keeps saying. But it’s no Pocket Rocket - it’s not a Renault Clio or a Peugeot, or even a Golf. It looks and feels much more special than any of those, whilst still reassuringly fast. 200bhp, 0-60mph in 7 seconds and a top speed of 155mph? Yes please! And yes, those figures are for the range-topping 2.0L petrol engines ones, but the 2.0L diesel and 1.4L petrol variants aren’t much slower either. The 1.4L model may have a smaller engine, but it has less kit with it too. Less weight = more speed, making it competitive enough to just about keep up with the 2.0L model. Sort of.

Also VW is passing it off as a small Coupe, but it really isn’t. Anyone in the market for a GT coupe would look at sports cars like the Mazda RX8 or the Nissan 350Z, and aren’t realistically going to consider something that looks like a hatchback. Meanwhile, hatchback customers will look at the Scirocco as a desirable option. Yes, it feels like a GT car inside, but its rivals are hatchbacks like the Golf GTi, not small GT coupes like the Alfa Romeo Brera. That says a lot for the car’s target audience too. So it’s a large, luxurious hatchback in my opinion.

Interior

Again the interior really surprised me. I was expecting an interior similar to that of the Mk V Golf, when in fact it’s a far cry. You get a taste of its ’sports car’ blood immediately when you notice that the headroom is lower than you’d expect and that visibility is a good 40-50% less than what you’d get in a Golf. However, this sacrifice is rewarded with beautiful high quality leather seats (even in the back seats. no driver-only shortcomings here!). They’re so good that I thought back to the Porsche 911 Turbo I drove at Donnington Circuit a while ago and to be honest, you can’t choose between them on comfort. That’s high praise. You also get a godlike driving position, GT-style doors and mirrors with a weighty and expensive feel to them, and luxuries such as a telephone system, DVD Satnav, cruise control, rear parking sensors, headlight washers, dusk-sensors and auto-headlights, rain sensors and auto-wipers for the windscreen, climate control, and a brand new system making its debut on the new Scirocco - ACC, or Adaptive Chassis Control. More on that later. But my favourite is actually a rather simple but clever feature - an electronic rear-view mirror that dims when there’s a lot of light. This is designed to help against tailgating bastards who drive an inch from your rear end with full beam headlights. Finally, something to fight off the bane of British roads!

It all feels like quite a special car, something that goes far beyond what you’d get from a large hatchback. The seats are comparable to that of Porsche’s offerings, which sounds absurd given that a Porsche is an exotic car. But I think that’s what the Scirocco is too - it feels like an exotic GT car for the common man with a common wage packet. That’s something Alfa Romeo has been trying to do for years, and their best effort thus far has been the Alfa Romeo Brera, a GT/hatchback much like the Scirocco. Only problem is, a top range one is between £25k-£30k before you even poke at the options list. You could get a fully-specced, top of the range Scirocco for the same price (and trust me, you won’t want all of the toys VW offers). So much for ‘common man’.

Exterior

It’s a case of swings and roundabouts. The Scirocco is by far the best looking VW in the past decade or two, and possibly the best looker amongst its competitors. It’s just a shame that VW are ripping people off with the paint jobs. The standard colours are Candy White and Salsa Red, both gloss colours. That’s it. The metallic colours are all very nice - Viper Green and Rising Blue being the best of the bunch in my opinion (don’t bother with black, it doesn’t seem to suit the car as well as the other colours). But they charge extra for those, and the standard colours put you in a tight spot. You can’t buy Salsa Red because it makes the Scirocco look like a bit of a girl’s car (which is great… if you’re a girl), and whilst Candy White looks brilliant in the showroom, you just know that within a week it’ll look dirty. However, I’m sure that if you offer to take a VW salesman out for dinner he’ll give you a showroom deal and you might be able to get a metallic colour for free. But don’t hold your breath, and don’t tell them I told you.

Aside from the colours you can also get a panoramic sunroof if you so choose. It’s just over £600 and to be honest I’ve heard scary stuff about it, like how it makes the cabin echo. I’d really recommend test-driving one with the sunroof before buying. Speaking of driving…

Performance

Since i’ve yet to drive it I can’t give you fancy poetic words, but I can tell you that it should be a laugh to drive. Ventilated disk brakes front and rear, a torquey 2.0L engine, and the option for Volkswagon’s famously brilliant DSG paddle-shift semi-automatic gearbox. Speed freaks will tell you to go for the DSG ‘box because gear changes are made “faster than a blink of the eye” (VW’s own words) and that’s not all hot air as it means the car is faster to 60mph than the standard manual. By 0.1 of a second. But you do pay £1000 or so more for it. The diesel variant has less power (140bhp as opposed to 200bhp) but will be smoother than the petrol variant. Fuel economy isn’t much better than the petrol though which is surprising, so I expect most people will be opting for the petrol version.

The talk of the town though is VW’s new ‘ACC’ system, or Adaptive Chassis Control, that’s debuting on the new Scirocco. As the name might suggest, it adjusts the suspension, throttle response and steering in accordance for what you want. You have a choice of three modes - ‘Normal’ is self explanatory and is the Scirocco’s default settings. ‘Comfort’ is probably going to be used for motorway driving as it softens the suspension and generally makes the car easier to drive in that environment. Then there’s the good ol’ ‘Sport’ mode which quickens the throttle response, makes the car more rev-happy, stiffens the suspension, and generally prepares the car for a good thrashing around on winding backroads. The hint of it’s capability is made in the form of a button sitting alongside the ACC controls that reads ‘ESP Off’. Hitting that turns the traction control off, giving you full control of the car so that you can plunge into that hedge if you really want to. Not many hatchbacks come with traction control. But whether all this effort in performance has worked is a question that will have to be answered later.

Should I buy one?

Well that remains to be seen and to be honest I’m asking myself the same question. I’d like this as my next car but it’s not cheap compared to what’s on offer. The basic Scirocco with a 1.4L engine starts at about £18k and climbs from there. But for a mere £2k extra you can get the Scirocco GT. It’s the best value for money out of the two because it comes with more luxuries as standard. For example, those fancy leather seats are extra on the basic model and even then only on the front seats, whilst the GT sports the fancy interior throughout the car.

It’s sort of in a class of it’s own. It’s noticeably better than the best hatchbacks on offer such as the Golf GTi, but as a full grown GT car it falls a bit short to hold its own in that category. It really is a mix of both classes. Buying one would be a question of ‘How badly do you want one?’

I want to take it for 24 hours to see what it’s like to live with in all conditions - wet, dry, day, night, motorways, towns, welsh backroads and so on. Some places do allow 24 hour test drives (Peugeot for example are forever advertising it) but I’d be lucky if I got such luck given that it’s so new. If it passes in all areas then i’d say go for it - very few cars tick as many boxes as the Scirocco, and it’s definitely a car you’d want to keep for a long, long, long time since it’s very practical and feels so special at the same time. It’s a car that will help with the weekly shopping or the school run, and at the same time allow blokes to revel in the joys of driving when the wife isn’t looking.

Overall rating? That will have to wait until after I’ve driven it.

I doubt many of you will have noticed (because you’re not all obsessive freaks like me) but i’ve noticed that whenever a car company make a new car, and you go to their main website to look it up and read up on it, their website gives you lots of wishy-washy poetry which if nothing else serves only to describe how the car was made, in a philosophical kind of way.

Take the new Porsche Panamera. I’m very excited about this car because not only is it Porsche’s first properly new car (and not just another 911 or Boxster variant) but it’s also the best of pretty much every world you could want. I’m serious - it’s a roomy four-seater with a big GT-sized boot, it’s got very high quality (and very nice) interior for those of you who drive an S-Class Mercedes or something, and then you have a choice - you can have a basic engine with 350bhp, a 500bhp ‘Turbo’ version that delivers face-bending acceleration, or you can have a nice, eco-friendly hybrid engine that Greenpeace wants everyone to have. No word on performance for the hybrid yet, but I’m guessing it’s still going to be stupidly fast though - Porsche say they’ve opted for a hybrid engine rather than a diesel engine because the extra weight of a diesel engine would ruin the performance of the car. If they’re putting an engine normally seen in a feeble Toyota Prius in and they’re still worrying about how fast it is, that means that chances are, it’s still going to drive like a Porsche.

And what does it look like? Well it’s not ugly but not pretty, but here it is:

The Panamera Turbo

I’ve deliberately given a frontal view of the car because the back end and the roof line is somewhat er… controversial. Many people hate the look. I quite like it though, because unlike every other car Porsche builds, it doesn’t look like a 911 or a Boxster. In fact the back end takes styling cues from the old 928-S of yesteryear. And I should know - my dad owns one of those. And the roofline may look a bit mishapen but you have to remember that Porsche is trying to combine a roomy, comfortable luxury car with a low, wide, taut supercar that’ll leave everything standing. No car in current existence has been able to do that - the closest you get is an S-Class Mercedes, which despite having a huge, shouty engine is more thunder than lightning. And even though the Panamera’s interior isn’t quite S-Class standard, it’s not far off - it’s the right colour, it has all the luxuries you might want, it’s roomy and it looks very comfortable.

I’ve managed to give you the details of the car (no word on cost yet, as far as I know) in this blog thus far. But what about Porsche themselves? What do they tell you when you visit their site? Well, you get this: Click Here.

And it’s not Porsche being particularly annoying either - all manufacturers do this, whether it’s to promote the new Lamborghini Estoque or the new Volkswagon Scirocco. All of them tend to shove fancy design philosophy in people’s faces and then make it difficult for you to find out anything of interest about the car. Yes, Porsche do tell you the details about the car - tucked away in fancy online magazines for which you have to subscribe to. This says to people ‘yes, we can tell you about our new car, but we want you to work for that privilege. Subscribe to us and show you are genuinely interested, and we’ll give you some figures.’

Whilst that might sound fair to the discerning enthusiast, what about the rest of the world? I’m sort of interested in, say, the VW Scirocco - it’s a gorgeous car, economical and apparently quite fast too. But i’m not going to subscribe to their mailing lists just to find out whether it’s front wheel drive, four wheel drive or rear wheel drive. This means journalists who want to pass on this information to petrolheads (and basically give free advertisment for said car companies) are personally hindered by agreeing to have their inboxes spammed with newsletters. And given the publicity they’re providing, you’d think that there’d be some sort of special bonus or reward for journalists. But nope - you’d be lucky if you even get a free test-drive for a day unless you’re a big name like Top Gear.

That said, I’m personally a Porsche enthusiast, I’m very excited about this Panamera, I want one already, so I don’t mind subscribing. But only Porsche would get away with this in my book. The rest are just annoying. Also not everyone loves Porsches, and none more so than I do, so this really doesn’t work for everyone. Just the select few.

Hi, and welcome to Driven Magazine UK!

All the introductory blurb can be found in the About page. What you’re reading is a blog entry. These blogs will serve as the sort of ‘Notes from the editor’ that you get in most printed magazines.

But on this occassion, I can’t really avoid talking about this magazine - what it’s about, what our aims are, etc. To summarise, we aim to convey a plethora of information about various things from news and reviews (such as Lambo’s ‘Estoque’ plans or Aston’s new million-quid supercar) to recommendations on second-hand buys and information about national car-related events (like the MPH show that the three unholy presenters of Top Gear are performing at), and we aim to deliver all this through a medium of banter, light humour and bad jokes. Just as if we were meeting up down the pub or something, only without having to baby that one person who always throws up, or being bottled for accidentally spilling someone’s drink.

As mentioned in the About page, this site will be changing radically and rapidly, so check back frequently to see what else we’ve done to defile this perfectly good webspace.

-Ash Horne

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