Three Pedals, No Screens: A Week With an Analogue Hot Hatch

The spec sheet reads like a protest. A small turbocharged four, a six-speed manual, cloth seats, physical climate controls, and a single modest screen that mostly minds its own business. In a market where cars are pitched as devices, this one is pitched as a car.

The first ten minutes are recalibration. You notice how low the scuttle is, how much you can see out of it, how the steering — light, quick, faintly nervous — tells you about the road surface before your spine does. Modern performance cars have made speed effortless. This makes 60 mph feel like a decision you took personally.

The supermarket test

Any car can be interesting on a launch route. The question is Tuesday. On Tuesday this thing swallowed a weekly shop, parked in a space designed in 1974, and returned 44 mpg doing it. The clutch is light. The ride, on sensible wheels with actual sidewalls, deals with speed bumps without drama.

The Sunday morning

But you don't buy this car for Tuesday. You buy it for the Sunday when you're up before the traffic and the road over the hill is empty and slightly damp in the shaded bits.

Momentum, not power, is the drug here — and momentum is legal.

Third gear, cresting the rise where the road drops toward the reservoir, a dab of brakes, turn in early, let the chassis settle, feed it in. Nothing about this sequence would trouble a modern EV's acceleration figures. All of it would trouble the EV's ability to make you grin.

Verdict

There are faster cars for the money. There is nothing more honest for it. Buy one while they still make them, because they won't make them long.