ASK a motoring enthusiast about their favourite road and you’ll receive an immediate answer which will include a detailed analysis about its sweeping corners, straights and recollections of the cars which have shone on the route.
Mine’s up in the Yorkshire Dales. It’s the smooth B6255 and it snakes its way through 10-and-a-bit miles of beautiful countryside from the Ribblehead Viaduct to Hawes. But given it’s more than an hour away from my front door, getting there is a rare occasion so more often than not I drive a few minutes away and find a small, tight and extremely testing section which has a knack of revealing a car’s weaknesses thanks to its technical corners and testing undulations.
If a car leaves you smiling after completing the route, you know you’ve got a good one and it’s exactly what the Volkswagen Up GTI did - time and time again - during my week with the tenacious miniature hot hatch.
The market is saturated with hatchbacks possessing in excess of 300bhp but there’s always a price to pay whether it’s the actual cost to buy, their woeful fuel economy or their bloated weight which dumbs down their responses. Cars like the Ford Focus RS, Honda Civic Type-R and Renaultsport Megane might be able to keep up with cars double their price on the right road but they all weigh more than 1,400kg - far too much and far removed from the original hot hatch recipe.
There’s a severe lack of lightweight, pocket rocket-style cars the sector was once renowned for, but that’s where the 995kg Up comes in. If headline-grabbing statistics are your thing, you’ll not be impressed by its spec sheet as everything on it is small, including the £13,750 price. It’s powered by a 999cc three-cylinder motor which, thanks to the addition of a turbocharger, produces 113bhp and a handy 147lb ft of torque.
That’s enough for a respectable 8.8-second sprint to 62mph which, for reference, is exactly the same as the original Golf GTI. VW, a manufacturer known for perhaps erring on the side of caution when it comes to styling, has gone all out to make its Up GTI - just the third car to wear the famous moniker alongside the Golf and Polo - stand out from the crowd.
It sits just right thanks to the 17-inch alloys and there’s the telltale red GTI piping along the rear and front bumper, as well as badging and a sporty single-exit exhaust. Open the featherweight door and you’re greeted by a typically VW interior which is well-made, a nice place to be and deceptively spacious.
Tartan, which might look like the outside of a shortbread tin on first glance, covers the seats and is another traditional GTI touch to set the Up apart from its lesser stablemates. The seats are possibly the only let down as they’re the same ones fitted to a normal Up, so I think VW could have given the GTI a pair of more supportive set.
Twist the key - no fancy starter button in here - and the miniscule powerplant fires until life with a three-cylinder growl. There’s no option of choosing VW’s double-clutch semi-auto DSG gearbox and that’s a great thing as the six-speed manual is a peach. From the off you know you’re in something different, something intriguing and something which is eager to bring a smile to its driver’s face.
It can’t be said the steering is alive with feel but the car, as soon as you’re at speed, buzzes along and absolutely adores corners. You pitch it in and possibly ask too much of its front tyres but it laps up your request for it to perform. On the whole its damping is rather good, although the ride can feel on the harsh side on the motorway.
But it’s quick, too. The 999cc engine does its best work between 2,500rpm - where the torque is delivered - and 5,000rpm so it’s pointless hanging on to gears beyond that point. It also sounds great, to my ears it’s half a Porsche 911 sort of tone, and no matter how hard you drive it you’ll struggle to see much below 40mpg.
On a long run, that figure will rise without too much effort to 55mpg. A £40 fill-up equates to about 350 miles - a very good return for such a fun little car.
It’s not often I fall for a car but there’s simply nothing to dislike about the charming Up GTI. It’s good looking, the interior is great, there’s masses of space in the back and most importantly it injects much-needed fun back into a market that’s become too serious, too obsessed with Nurburgring lap records and very expensive.
In a world of £25,000 middle-level Fiestas and £40,000 Kias, the grin-a-minute Up is a bargain for what it offers. It’s a performance hero which feels like it’s from another era where light, fun and cheap-to-buy small hot hatches were commonplace.
Handing the keys back to VW was done with a heavy heart but despite its diminutive size, it’s fair to say it left an enormous impression on me. It evokes the spirit of the original Golf GTI, something which VW has failed to do for decades - until now.
