Mythbuster: was the original Volkswagen Golf GTI the first hot hatch?

Myth: “the Golf GTI was the OG hot hatch”

Much as I like German cars, other nationalities do exist. German carmakers have a habit of pretending they invented everything. Back when it launched the M-Class, Mercedes called it the first luxury off-roader. Range Rover? Jeep Wagoneer? Both of them instantly erased from history.

Audi laughably said the A5 Sportback was the first of its kind. The Mondeo Ghia wasn’t all that premium but it was a good car and it sat among a field of about two dozen other five-door fastbacks the same size.

BMW called the X6 the first coupe-SUV. Which ignored the 2005 SsangYong Actyon, which might have been a crapbox but was also AFAIK the first.

VW doesn’t have to bang on about the Golf GTI being the first hot hatch. It’s able to step back and point out the rest of us make that claim. “It’s considered the original in its class,” crows a booklet published to mark 50 years of racing and sporty Golfs. Guilty as charged. We’re like a stuck record: the Golf GTI was the first hot hatch.

Of course it stays in the memory, because VW has been faithful to the format ever since, bringing out a GTI pretty promptly with each generation of Golf. And we’re up to eight now. Its rivals have been far flakier in maintaining their lines, dipping in and out of hot hatch sales with succeeding crises of insurance, theft or other general bouts of consumer nerves. So yup, the Golf remains top of mind, and we perceive it as the daddy.

Except of course it wasn’t. Some weeks before the Golf GTI reached its first buyers, Renault started selling the 5 Alpine. (Alpine was the name of a Sunbeam in Britain, so the 5 was called the Gordini here.) It wasn’t injected but was hotted up and had stripes. That said the Golf hit one milestone first, as it appeared at a motor show, Frankfurt, in September 1975, before the Renault.

Anyway, we can go back further. The Simca 1100 is these days a forgotten car from a forgotten brand, but it was a colossal seller across Europe in the early 1970s, and the twin-carb Ti version from 1974 has a reasonable claim to be an earlier hot hatch. Then again, one could dig back further, to the 1971 Autobianchi A112 Abarth.

These are just the ones with FWD and an actual rear hatch, disbarring the 2dr Mini Cooper or RWD BMW 2002 Touring. But history is written by the winners.