SPEED WEEK SPONSORED BY
Better stick that music from the Hovis ad on because I’m about to sound like an old fart. There was a time, not very long ago, when a hot hatch was a hot hatch. You knew what you were getting, a lightly souped up shopping trolley with just enough performance to encourage yobbish behaviour, but at a price that dangled it in front of anyone who saw cars as more than a conveyance from A to B. Accessibility, practicality, lobability – those were the pillars of this once great genre that’s in danger of disappearing altogether.
A month before I joined the team at in 2015 there was a ‘B-road Heroes’ issue that pitched the UK’s 28 best hot hatches against each other on a drizzly Scottish hillside. TWENTY EIGHT! These days you’d be lucky to scrape together double digits: RS and ST Focuses and Fiestas are no more, RenaultSport has evaporated, VW has lost its way, hot Peugeots are now chubby plug-in hybrids. It’s total chaos and
