Wallpapers: the best of TG’s hot hatch mega-test

What’s the best hot hatch in the UK? A simple question, but as we found out recently, a tricky one to answer.

In a bid to do just so, Top Gear magazine recently gathered pretty much every hot hatch – diesel, estate, small, large, the lot – currently on sale in the UK, and got technical.

No half measures. Rather, we applied TG’s finest rigorous testing to provide you with the definitive verdict.

To kick off, some high-speed drag racing and genuine maths occured. That included putting 28 hot hatches on four bathroom scales, attaching lots of cables and sensors and producing a big Excel spreadsheet of numbers. From the results, we then whittled the long-list down to 10, and headed to Scotland.

Upon arrival, we blatted our ten contenders around Knockhill circuit – mostly on two wheels – and put touring car legend and local hero Gordon Shedden behind the wheel for some laps.

Four more were knocked out, and the remaining six dispatched on an epic drive across the Cairngorms to the Applecross Pass, perhaps the most B-roady B-road in the whole of the UK.

It put our remaining blue-collar heroes, and their affordable and exploitable nature, to the absolute test.

Eventually we were left with one, the best hot hatch on sale today. In traditional Top Gear style, we crowned the victor victorious by parking it precariously on a rock at the top of a cliff edge. Find out the winner here.

When you’re done, hop back here and grab a free desktop wallpaper from the selection above. All you have to do is click the full screen/make-it-big icon in bottom-right of the gallery above, scroll through the picture that takes your fancy and then save the super hi-res image. Easy.