A GOOD WALK SPOILED

For as long as mankind has been able to bang rocks together and communicate in anything more than a system of grunts, there’s been one mantra which people have also been using to proffer one another as advice: ‘Get a Golf.’

Alright, maybe the habit doesn’t stretch quite that far back, but certainly to 1974. When Volkswagen decided to replace their evergreen Beetle with a boxfresh new radicalist that delivered haymaker after haymaker to the traditionalists, there was more than a little gobsmackery among the automotive community: this pesky little upstart had its engine in the front, and a water-cooled engine no less; it was a hatchback, with boxy styling and all sorts of unseemly ideas. But it immediately became apparent that this bullish chancer was by far the best-inclass; indeed, it invented a new class all of its own, and each of its subsequent generations have remained at the top table. Sure, there have been a few misses among the countless hits