Everybody agrees that the Volkswagen GTI is a great car. Except for the US-market MkI, which was underpowered. And the Mk2, which was really underpowered. Don’t the forget the Mk2 16V, which was wayyy overpriced and over-complicated. And the MkIII, which had no business calling itself a GTI, not with that chunky VR6 under the hood and the super-soft factory suspension. The Mk4? I heard it was a bit of a wallowing pig, and everything fell off it. That Mk5 seemed to be a hell of a car, except it was down on power compared to everything else in the segment and it had a large magnet in the front bumper which inexorably dragged it to the nearest VW service department.

If I understand the conventional wisdom, the only GTI which everyone seems to like is the original round-light German-market MkI GTI. And since almost nobody in North America has driven one, it’s possible they are just fooling themselves.

When exactly was the GTI great, anyway?

Five minutes in this MkVI GTI will show you the answer to that question, so come along with me as I enter the fast portion of VW’s Virginia press loop. This is from memory, not from video, so I apologize if I leave anything out.

We’ll start with a 150-degree off-camber right-hander. Too hot! The GTI plows for a moment until we remove all brake input and let the outside edge of the tire catch. Now it’s full-throttle along a long sweeping downhill left-hander. The end of the turn is blind but keep your foot in it. At the bottom of the hill there’s an odd dip that completely upset the Beetle and caused the Golf R to compute ferociously as the four driven wheels argued amongst themselves.

The GTI, on the other hand, just doesn’t care. Whomp down just before the bumpstops. This feels like a world-class shock tune, the steering stays straight, and we stay compressed up a short, steep, full-throttle hill before cresting and heading downhill right, then left. Rebound damping is outstanding, so much so that I want to find the people who engineered the CTS-V and make them drive THIS Volkswagen on THIS route. Turns out you can beat computer shocks with plain ones…

…except these are computer shocks, too, as this GTI has some kind of three-way adjustment and I have it set to “Sport”. We’ll make a mental note to drive one without the fancy stuff. (Note: This is the result of me misreading my post-drive notes. The Golf R had the adjustable shocks, the GTI and GLI did not. However, I’m not a fan of post-release editing so I am leaving the mistake in. – JB)

Speaking of fancy stuff, note that the DSG has been flawless so far, holding the right gear when needed and seamlessly helping the engine along despite just being left in “S”. Why waste time paddling the wheel shifters when the transmission is so smart on its own? The exhaust note is multi-dimensional and it stutters almost like a boxer engine before blipping, F1-style, into the next gear without a whiff of flywheel effect. It may be one of the first dual-clutch transmissions, but it’s still perhaps the most appealing one.

Now we have a series of fast switchbacks down a hill. The guys from Bigtime Magazine who were tailgating us on the state highway a few minutes ago aren’t even visible in the mirror. This is an excellent place to try going flat in third, and we’re on the way to doing it ARRRGGGHHH THERE IS AN ELDERLY WOMAN PLANTING FLOWERS BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD well the brakes, honestly, could stand a little more pad area or a more aggressive compound. The calipers from the Golf R would be nice to have.

Now there’s some soft, heat-related travel in the left pedal but it doesn’t matter. Stomp the ABS a bit for a sharp 120-degree left. Too hot again. Would be nice to have just a slightly more aggressive tire on this thing. Unless we make a change here we will hit a mailbox at about fifty mph, so brush the brake left-footed and roootate just a touch. The computer allows for a second or so of left-foot braking before entering Sudden Acceleration Mode and cutting spark/fuel/whatever. That’s nice to have, and remember that the real advantage of DSG isn’t the shift speed but rather the ability to balance the car on both pedals.

Now we have a long straight followed by a wide-radius blind right-hander and sharper left-hander running beneath an overpass. In the R and Beetle this wasn’t really flat-out, but in the GTI you can hold your throttle/breath/nuts all the way to a late entry of the second turn. Doing so requires that you grind the outside tire to the squealing semi-limit very close to gravel. There’s plenty of feedback through the steering, and the level of effort involved is an accurate reflection of the number of small stones beneath the tread block closest to the shoulder. It inspires confidence. We could pick up 1 or 2 mph next time.

Now it’s time to hustle up and down a narrow road before hanging it out for a third-gear downhill leftie. All the way down, the GTI responds to mild throttle adjustments by pointing the nose in or out just a touch. If we get a bit ham-handed with the wheel, the DSC light will come on but it’s not inclined to get involved until we do.

The Golf R didn’t really feel fast enough on this road, since the binary stop/turn/go technique demanded by its weight and drivetrain showed up the engine’s deficiencies. The GTI, on the other hand, is more than fast enough. If anything, it’s brakes that we need back here; the 2.0T can push the little car just a bit faster than it can stop. On a racetrack, the problem would be even more pronounced.

Take a look around the interior. It’s standard VW fare, available with a few extras if you so desire. The cloth seats are, to many people, an indispensible part of the GTI experience, but some people will insist on leather. Your humble author is not qualified to judge the minute distinctions between different Volkswagen plastics the way that many Euro-fans are. I had two Phaetons and compared to them the GTI sucks. I also had a 1990 Fox, and compared to that it seems quite nice. In between, I had a 2000 Golf GLS 1.8T four-door, which I bought for invoice and sold with 23,000 miles for a grand under invoice, and that seems about the same as the GTI, interior-wise. So there you go.

Let’s return to the drive. The GTI can do what the Beetle and Golf R can’t. It can make you want to go faster. It can involve you. It can be steered, braked, and accelerated in a linear, predictable, but still joyful fashion. The controls are properly weighted, the rest of the car doesn’t distract from the mission, and it feels like a high-quality piece. These cars are no longer exactly cheap, but they are a good value.

Most importantly, the obvious speed gap between this GTI and some of the competition doesn’t matter so much when the experience of driving the car is so delightful. Yes, a Mazdaspeed 3 is faster; no, I wouldn’t dream of buying an MS3 instead. It would be nice if the GTI were five hundred pounds lighter, but we live in a world where something like that simply isn’t going to happen. No time soon, anyway.

If the GTI is so wonderful — and it is, it truly is — why doesn’t it win first place in the Intramural League? The obvious answer is that the GLI ended up being more satisfying for me, and we will discuss the reasons for it in the final article. In the meantime, however, at least we have the answer to “When, exactly, was the GTI so great?” That answer is: Right now.

This article is dedicated to my friend Kathy, a fast and furious little Mk5 GTI street racer from Houston who fearlessly reaches for top gear on downtown freeways and then reads Ross Bentley in bed, or so I’m told, anyway.

“When we started working on the FT-86 we had no idea where we would end up,” said Tetsuya Tada, whom I met last Sunday to talk about his work.

“Was it going to be a ridiculously expensive car? Or one anyone can buy? All we knew it was going to be a sports car. The rest was a blank sheet.”

The FT-86 that eventually took shape on this blank sheet will be in showrooms down the street from you, all over the world, next year.

The FT-86 ”may just be the car to herald Toyota’s ‘second renaissance,” if some enthusiast blogs are right.

At the very least, this car will change how we think and dream of a sports car: We won’t. This is not a dream car. For most of us, it will be an impulse buy.

Tetsuya Tada tells its story.

Tetsuya Tada is the Chief Engineer of the FT-86, Toyota’s new sports car that had powered the rumor mills for many years. Some enthusiast blogs enthusiastically painted Tada as the “Jason Bourne of Toyota Sports car development.” If that is the case, then he is the friendliest and most unassuming Jason Bourne I ever heard of. He is the man I’d expect to see carrying two bags when I take out my carefully sorted garbage after midnight in a quiet Japanese neighborhood. As a Toyota Chief Engineer however, Tada carries more responsibility and more power than the Ludlum hero. Scott Bellware once described the role of a Chief Engineer at Toyota like this:

“He is the person responsible for the design, development, and sale of the product. He is the organizational pinnacle and the hub through which authority and ability flow. The CE isn’t just an architect or technical lead or just a customer proxy or just a project manager or just process master. He’s all of these things and more. He doesn’t just pass along customer requirements for the product, he defines them. He doesn’t just implement the business’s design for the product, he creates it. He’s large and in-charge, and he’s uniquely and deeply qualified to be so.

Because all of these abilities and authorities are invested in one extremely capable, senior, trusted product development person, the coordination of the various perspectives, values, and vision of a product and its execution don’t suffer design-by-committee issues. And because the CE has these many responsibilities and abilities, he’s a rare person.”

Tada indeed is a rare person. Dressed in khaki pants and a striped shirt, the affable attitude accentuated by rimless glasses, he hides all that power well.

We met last Sunday at Toyota’s Megaweb down by the waterfront. Megaweb is part theme park, part test drive venue. We met there, because an FT-86 prototype is on display. We didn’t go there to drive it. First off, Megaweb is not a test track. It was barely appropriate to give the iQ a slow spin. Second, most of the FT-86 is still a secret. Doors and hatches of the car on display are locked tight. So were the lips of its Chief Engineer.

“You can ask anything except specs and price,” Tada-san announced after we found a quiet space away from the din of the Megaweb.

“In that case, let’s have lunch,” was my answer.

In lieu of talking about cars, we found out that Tada lived where I lived during his time in Germany: In Düsseldorf Oberkassel, me because of its watering holes, him because of the Japanese school. Japan’s Jason Bourne is a dad who rather did a 100km round trip commute to Toyota Cologne each day than put his children’s education at risk. Speaking of lunch, we established that we both had regular lunch at the Kikaku, Düsseldorf’s best sushi place. That created a bit of bonding, and Tada started talking about the car.

When Tada stared at a white page, it was 2007. He didn’t know what to think:

“We did know from the very beginning that it was going to be a sports car. I said, well, if it’s going to be a sports car, it has to go fast. We were looking at the Nissan GT-R, the Mitsubishi Evolution, those cars were in our heads at the original stage.

Then we thought: Should we make a car that is faster than the GT-R?

You know what we did then? We did a lot of research. We talked to owners, fanatics, real buyers of sports cars around the world. They told us: Speed isn’t everything. If it’s just an incredibly fast car, they don’t really want it. What they want is a sports car that is small, compact, light, and that handles just the way they want it to handle.”

The customers wanted more: They wanted a sports car for less. A Veyron makes for good copy and dreams. But it also causes can’t-have-it frustrations. Tada listened intently to his future customers:

“The super-super-super fast cars are only for the super-rich. Even most super-rich don’t want to buy them. The people I talked to were looking for something like the 80s kind of a sports car, echoes of an AE86. They wanted a stripped-down, basic sports car with the price more like that of a piece of sports equipment, not the price of a house. Those people wanted something that doesn’t exist.”

Tada and his team set out to design the impossible. A year later, they had the design, the specs, and the price point. Tada presented it to the board of Toyota. The concept was approved. The project had an important advocate on the board: Akio Toyoda. At the time, the CEO was Katsuaki Watanabe. The time was 2008, and all over the world, the skies were falling.

Tada puts it in his trademark humble words when he describes the boardroom discussions:

“Sometimes, it is a little hard to explain why this kind of a vehicle is needed for the Toyota brand. If you just take the commercial point of view – it won’t make a lot of money, and of course, there are some people who object to that. But as they say, money isn’t everything – especially when it comes to branding.”

At the height of carmageddon, Tada received the go-ahead for what we would call an “enthusiast car.” The Japanese have a more befitting description. It’s a “nekkyousha car” a car for maniacs – in a good way. It helped that Toyota’s resident auto otaku, Akio Toyoda, was behind the concept, and it helped even more that he became President of Toyota a year later.

Asked what changed for the FT-86 when Toyoda took the helm of Toyota, Tada says: ”He became one of our test drivers.”

Asked what it means when you work in the shadow, but also in full view of the President of the world’s largest carmaker, Tada changes the subject. His true boss is the customer, and the customer didn’t want another rice racer:

“It is possible to soup-up sedans or hatchbacks to make them sporty. But what these people are after is a body that is already very low to the ground, very sleek, a body that they can then work on – if they want.”

As for low to the ground, Tada promises a “production car with the world’s lowest center of gravity.” The FT-86 will be a tinkerer’s car. The car is named “FT-86” for a reason. Toyota wants to make a mental connection to the AE86, the archetypical cult-craze car from the Star Wars era. Nearly 20 years later, the hachiroku (Japanese for 86) still commands a following for which some modern day Messiahs would kill. Toyota wants to build a new millennium hachiroku so bad, they even kept the number. Says Tada:

“The 86 was such a popular maniac car not because of what the maker did, but what the users did with it. It created its own aftermarket and a tuner industry. The idea of the FT-86 is basically the same. We want to create a car that is easy for people to tune and to play with.”

Tada indeed is a rare person. The Teutonic engineers I grew up with used go into convulsions or threw screaming fits when people modified “their cars” – except maybe using factory-approved and overpriced accessories.

Tada smiles when you ask him whether is hurts his pride as an engineer when the people of SEMA gang-rape “his car.”

“Yes.”

A short, but honest answer. Isn’t it painful to spend years designing the perfect car, and to make it so perfect in a sense that some guys in a garage can modify it beyond recognition without even breaking a sweat or lighting a welder?

“Yes.”

The Chief Engineer’s sensitivities are touched by the most benign act of modding – the choice of tires:

“We usually come up with a designated tire, a tire that is optimal for the car. We arrive at this decision after long tests. That some guys go and decide their own tire steals a little something from the enjoyment of the engineer – but that’s the concept of this vehicle. It is not made for the enjoyment of the engineer – it is made for the enjoyment of the owner.”

That owner may not need a lot of money, but he will need to know how to drive. He will need to use his own brain and the seat of his own pants. Tada had jotted down the principle in his self-derived design guide, and he sticks with it:

“From the beginning, the concept was to put the driver back in the driver’s seat, and to eliminate computers as much as possible today. Powerful sports cars use a lot of computer technology so that anyone can drive and handle them. We decided not to go down that road.”

The FT-86 has about half of the computing power that is dragged around in a modern day car. The preferred shifter is a stick. An automatic is optional. The slushbox is nothing fancy. “No DSG or anything of that kind,” says Tada, and is proud. Sure, the automatic has a computer, but the shift points cannot be changed – at least not at the flip of a switch in the dashboard. Computers want to keep you on the straight and narrow, but some FT-86 owners want that car to go sideways. If you need nannies, go down to the children’s hospital.

The FT-86 will be built at Fuji Heavy’s Subaru, and when I mention that, the engineer’s pride shifts into low gear – for extra revs. Tada quickly explains that this is just contract production, and it’s the same as “when we make cars at Central Motors or Kanto Auto Works.” Both are separate companies, but they are also part of the greater Toyota empire. Toyota owns a good chunk of Fuji Heavy, so Subaru is part of the family – in a way.

Subaru will produce its own version, probably called the BRZ. Both companies also developed the car together, and that must have been an interesting exercise. Recalls Tada:

“The first year was actually quite tough. The character and processes of the two companies are quite different. In the beginning, we sat down and decided who does what. That didn’t work out very well, because of the cultural differences between the companies. When people started to become more interested in the car itself, people from both sides ended up becoming one team. In the end, it wasn’t so much Toyota doing this and Subaru doing that, but people working together with one goal.”

In the maniac, well, enthusiast scene, it is pretty much gospel that the cars use Subaru’s flat four “D4-S” boxer engine. Depending on whom you believe, the production engine ranges from a tried & true to a refined & modified D4-S. That elicits protests from Tada, as loud as the softspoken man can manage:

“No,no, no – it is a completely new engine. The engine is still a boxer. The technology, even the engine block are completely new. Everything is new. The only thing that remained are the mounting points.”

Imagine how much engineer’s pride that one did cost. A completely new engine was developed. At the same time it comes with an invitation to be swapped for whatever follows the Subaru bolt pattern.

After years of concept cars, the production version of the FT-86 will debut at the Tokyo Motor Show, December 2 – December 11, 2011. “Next year” (most likely in spring), the car will be launched. It won’t be available in Japan first and years later elsewhere. It will, says Tada, be available next year “all over the world.” In the U.S., it will definitely by a Scion. In the rest of the world, it will be a Toyota.

Jack Baruth and Sajeev Mehta equipped me with a long list of questions. After Tada’s initial admonition that we can talk about everything except specs and price, I didn’t have much hope for answers, but nonetheless, I tried. The following Q&A ensued:

“Can you tell me the weight?” “No.”

“Can you tell me the horsepower?” “No.”

“Can you tell me the weight distribution?” “No.”

“Can you tell me the price” “No. It will be affordable.”

“Suspension?” “McPherson, double wishbone.” And a smile.

And so it went while Tada was conspicuously consulting his watch, signaling that time, patience, or both are running out. All I could do was to use the old investigative reporter trick, put two versions on the table, and ask which one is close. I used the crowd-sourced specs from the fountain of knowledge.

Tada eye-balls both. And gives his verdict. See above.

Last question time!

“Mr. Tada – is it true that you compared the color of the FT-86 to the ass of a monkey?”

Ooops. The Chief Engineer covers his mouth in feigned shock and explains that he indeed had experienced “some trouble” after magazines had written that he indeed had compared the car’s color to a monkey’s derriere. He quickly adds that he had referred not to just any monkey, but to a genuine Japanese monkey, those amicable animals that visit hot springs in wintertime, with icicles dangling from their furs – parts of Japan’s storied heritage.

And that’s not all, says Tada. The FT-86 red can also be compared to the world famous Japanese sunset (no sunrise is mentioned) and to the dragonfly. In Japan, the dragonfly is a symbol of courage, strength, and happiness – it even symbolizes the whole Japanese archipelago.

So there you have it. The FT-86 is so customizable, so tunable, so hot-roddable that it gives you a choice of associations triggered by its color. Depending on your mood, you can pick sunset, dragonfly, or an entirely appropriate greased monkey. As long as they are Japanese.

Anybody here ever go to Catholic school? I sure as hell did. About six of them over the course of seven years. I learned really quickly how to distinguish the nuns who scolded from the nuns who slapped, paddled, or punched. (Sister Andrea! What’s up?) I also learned that kids rarely attend Catholic school alone. They have brothers. Sometimes they have big brothers. I remember one family — the Szolozsis — who had nine sons. Nine sons. If I’d been Papa Szolozsi, I’d have bought a lottery ticket. Anyway, I went to school with the third-youngest. Anybody who beat that kid up had to face the bigger brothers one a time until he either took a beating or whipped ‘em all. Alternately, he could get his bigger brothers involved. Happened all the time, this escalation of big brothers. High school sophomores would knock each other unconscious over fights that had started a week before in second grade, while the two second-graders, who were now best friends forever once more, would dispassionately observe the proceedings.

Since the WRX arrived in American parking lots, ditches, and tirewalls a decade ago, followed by its bigger brother STi and the brother’s rival Lancer Evolution, fans of Volkswagen’s GTI have been put in the position of a the wimpy grade-school kid hoping his European bigger brother would arrive to set things straight. The original R32 turned out to be the kind of reasonable, cultured sibling who would rather talk things out than fight. “Look, I have this wonderful leather interior. Do we have to settle this on the dragstrip?” The second-generation R32 was kind of like having a big brother from the special-needs classes; all the mean kids pointed and laughed whenever he showed up.

Welcome the newest big brother. No more messing around with six-cylinder refinement and nose-heavy dynamics. The new Golf R packs a spec sheet straight out of Japan: cranked-up two-liter turbo, six-speed manual, all-wheel drive. Tell the STi we’ll meet him next to the incinerator at lunch…

…where we will proceed to receive a vicious ass-kicking of the first degree. Forget any hopes you had of this admittedly very aggressive and impressive Golf beating an STi down a dragstrip, around a racetrack, or through an autocross course. It’s not going to happen. It’s down on power, very likely up on weight, and every control available to the driver feels like it’s been dipped in molasses. Those of you hoping that the Fatherland would use this Golf R to finally assert supremacy over the disposable speed machines from two of America’s shadiest dealer bodies can stop reading now.

What? You’re still here? Okay, we can talk about why the Golf R gets third place in our Intramural League. It’s easy to explain why it beats the Beetle: it’s faster and more capable without being any less fun to drive. Fair enough? At this rate, this review could end so quickly I’ll have time for a completely misguided “styling analysis”. Unfortunately for me, I now have to explain to you why the Golf R falls behind the other two contenders, the GLI and GTI. This will be a little tougher to accomplish.

What is a Golf R? Glad you asked. It’s a Golf with a 256-horsepower variant of the 2.0T which failed to impress in our Beetle Turbo review. Unfortunately, that engine comes bolted-up to Volkswagen’s make-do AWD system. A few years ago, I dinged the Audi TT-S for having too much weight and too much drivetrain for the 2.0T to shine. In the heavier Golf, that problem is compounded even further. While I am certain that somebody, somewhere, will turn a 13.9 quarter-mile in this thing somehow, in my test drive it felt nothing more than sluggish, and barely any quicker than the Beetle.

Our test car was a Euro-spec Golf R, which supposedly has 265 horsepower compared to the US model’s 256. You’re unlikely to notice the difference, if it actually exists. What you do notice from the first minute you drive the car is the absurdly tall gearing. First gear is WAYYY too high (numerically low), making getting under way a dicey proposition. I observed a pair of girljournos stall it five times in a row trying to leave the lunch area at the press event. I never stalled the R, but I sure as hell had time to contemplate the eternal mysteries of the world while trying to do a 5-60 roll.

Second and third gear are marginally better, so that’s good news: if you are prepared to stay above 45mph at all times during your backroad drive, you’ll be fine. Torque steer is nonexistent, for two reasons. Reason one: an improved AWD system keeps the rear wheels driven at all times, thus preventing the torque-steer-then-shift-drive-to-the-back-axles that happens in most transverse-engined FWD systems including, say, the Flex Ecoboost. I mention the Flex Ecoboost because if you own a Golf R you’d better steer clear of that thing. From a dig you’ll get smoked. Reason two, of course, is that the engine isn’t really strong enough to produce torque steer. As often happens with big-boost versions of low-boost engines, the flexibility seen in the regular 2.0 is totally abandoned for the purpose of producing a power number that matches the Mitsubishi Evolution.

The 1994 Mitsubishi Evolution.

Want some good news? The interior is an exceptionally pleasant place in which to spend those long drives down the dragstrip. The seats are great, the stereo should be outstanding, and everything you can touch feels relatively expensive. Even the steering feels expensive, and deliberately so. This is accomplished, as far as I can tell, by modulating the power assistance in such a way as to create a very odd feel. It’s still obviously assisted, it just isn’t assisted much, and the effort is evened-out no matter what you’re doing with the car. I race a small car without power steering. It’s much lighter around dead center than this Golf’s steering is. Quite odd. Perhaps it has something to do with damping out the steering oscillations induced by an active AWD system.

Down the backroad portion of my test loop, I struggled to make any serious time. Not because the car couldn’t handle it, but it simply didn’t feel interested in going quickly. It wasn’t always obvious what was going on with the front end, and the gearing simply couldn’t work with the engine to provide reliable thrust. Luckily the brakes, which look to have been borrowed from an A6 or Phaeton, were uber-reliable despite having Sliding Caliper Disease. That’s how you drive a Golf R. Late brake, middling corner speed, stand on the gas almost immediately and wait for the boost to climb the gearing hill. The whole experience ended up being very point-and-shoot. This is fine for the average “I experienced understeer at 38mph” journosaur, but your humble author was frustrated beyond all reason. The current Evo and STi aren’t as great as their 2008-era predecessors, but either one handily outclasses this Volkswagen.

The alert VW fanboy has already stopped reading this review to run to his forum and write

lolz baruth failz again… he is 2 stupid 2 realeyes that the golfr is a EUROPAEN DRIVING MACHINE AND LUXURY compeating with the DRYER THREE SEREIS and the MB C63 AMG… i hate this guy and his pheatons… i will totally buy a golf r in eight years when they are cheap used and i finally get that job at best buy

Yes, Mr. LAMBODRIVER69, I understand that the Golf R was never intended to compete heads-up with the STi and Evolution. The problem is that here in the United States, that’s all it gets to compete against. A Mustang GT will rip its windshield off and dump oil on its seats. A BMW 328i goes just as fast, maybe faster, and is likely to cost less. Perhaps the people who choose a Golf R will never consider the Japanese cars. That’s a shame, because the Japanese cars are worth considering, to say nothing of the aforementioned Mustang.

The bottom line: This big brother won’t fight when you need him to, so don’t bother. As we will find out in the second half of this comparison test, however, the kids are alright on their own.