The MG Metro was just about adequate in its poorly built and rather limited fashion.
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5: MG METRO TURBO (1983)
The Turbo version raised the price point but not the ability level, leaving a car that was still slow but now with added expense and turbo lag.
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4: ALFA ROMEO ARNA (1983)
The Japanese were brilliant at building cars, the Italians superb at designing them. So what did Alfa and Nissan provide?
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4: ALFA ROMEO ARNA (1983)
A car designed by the Japanese and built by the Italians. You couldn’t make it up. And once you’d driven it, you’d wish they hadn’t.
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3: RENAULT SPORT CLIO V6 MK1 (2001)
By all objective measures, a terrible car. Too heavy, too soft and too short in the wheelbase, it was slow as well as vicious on the limit.
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3: RENAULT SPORT CLIO V6 MK1 (2001)
The looks and V6 give it a certain charm but not enough to make up for its shortcomings. Nice photo though.
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2: PEUGEOT 207 GTI (2007)
Another sheep desperately trying to cover its inadequacies by exploiting a past it did not deserve.
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2: PEUGEOT 207 GTI (2007)
A joyless driving experience from a genuinely poor car made all the worse by the knowledge of how far Peugeot had slipped, and how fast.
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1: VOLKSWAGEN GOLF GTI MK3 (1992)
And the winner is… The Golf GTI Mark 3. A hot hatch by name badge alone and symptomatic of the terrible state the genre had got itself into after its golden era.
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1: VOLKSWAGEN GOLF GTI MK3 (1992)
The Mk3 GTI was nothing to look at and no fun to drive and it took VW two generations to recover the ground it lost.
Subtle changes to VW’s hot hatch icon are good news for a car that needed little fixing; it's one of the most expertly judged and complete performance machines you can buy
A new Golf tops the range: the GTI Clubsport S. It's a limited-run, lightened, 306bhp hot hatchback that its maker says is the fastest front-driver of all
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