Road Test: Volkswagen Golf 2.0 GTi 3dr

Like the weather and Claudia Winkleman, the Volkswagen Golf is omnipresent. It's the answer to roughly 85 per cent of all car-related questions that ever get asked, and 60 per cent of all questions, full stop. The downside to this crushing ubiquity is that occasionally you might want to do a reverse Basil Fawlty, and set about its bonnet with a large branch because it's so boringly good.

Unless you're in a GTI, in which case some proper analogue fun might leaven the competence quotient. You know the history. Invent the hot hatch in the Seventies, invent the 16V hot hatch in the Eighties, drop the ball in spectacular style in the Nineties with lard-bucket base version and nose-heavy and unreliable VR6, relocate missing mojo in 2003 with über-cool sort of back-to-basics MkV iteration. Which way will the Wolfsburg wheel turn this time?

"New Golf GTI: faster, more efficient and cheaper to insure." Hmm. In the real world - company car tax, soaring fuel prices, wayward jetstreams - this is understandable messaging, but a 47.1mpg combined average and 139g/km CO2 is not necessarily the stuff of fizzy nether regions, which is what I really want from my GTI. On the other hand, spend £980 on top of the £25,845 the base model costs, and you'll get the Performance pack, which wrings roughly 10 more bhp from the GTI's 2.0-litre turbo four (to 227), adds bigger brakes and, most importantly, introduces a clever new limited-slip diff. Despite burying this possibility deep in their online configurator, it's actually a pretty big deal for VW, so much so that TG has gone on an exclusive advance sortie to a private circuit beside a château near Aix-en-Provence specifically to try it out.

A handful of VW engineers are waiting for us, armed with graphs and diagrams. This is fun, fun, fun. Not as the Beach Boys or Stooges sang about it, but expressed empirically by friendly but earnest Germans whose logic is hard to derail. "The Golf GTI is a car that everyone, regardless of their ability, should be able to drive to maybe 90 per cent of its maximum within a few minutes," Karsten Schebsdat, manager of passenger car chassis tuning, tells me. Lots of wavy lines and pointing to Schwimmwinkels - slip angles - certainly suggests that this is a car that can handle a whole load of abuse. "We did a slalom test in the GTI at 140mph, and, as you can see, there are no sharp curves on the graph," Karsten adds contentedly.

The diff in question is an electro-hydraulic set-up that locks up 100 per cent, and uses a multi-plate coupling - a bit like half the Haldex system Volkswagen has used for years - on the diff box and right driveshaft. The aim is simple: reduced steering angle, more precise handling, increased cornering velocity, slingshot exit speeds.

Here we go, then. There's a long, fast straight, wisely interrupted by a coned chicane, into a fairly long right-hander. You only have to look at it to know that this is understeer city, the sort of thing that pits tyres and traction against each other in smoky mortal combat. The approach to the corner is a good indicator of the GTI's overall character: it's smooth, unruffled and fast without kicking you in the back or grabbing you by the balls. Taking the cones at 90mph reveals how little effort you need at the wheel - it's an electro-mechanical set-up and a wrist-flick will do - and how fantastically composed the car is. Not too hard on the brakes, surprisingly throaty rasps from the exhaust as you work your way down through the gearbox, then turn in. Everything feels enjoyably linear, if a little... aloof.

But midway through the corner, you can simply stand on the throttle, then more or less go on holiday while some torque-shuffling front-axle voodoo hauls you round. It's extremely impressive, but you need to give it full beans for it to work properly. The GTI has never been a car whose back end was particularly mobile, but more than ever the slip angles are minimal. Drive it like a gorilla with pepper on its bum, and still the Golf hangs on. And on. Ferrari insists that no one - not even a certain F Alonso - can lap Fiorano faster in the new LaFerrari with its e-diff electronics switched off than they would with everything on. It's a bit depressing, really. Now the Golf GTI is peddling the same trick: by working so harmoniously, its chassis architecture promotes an unarguably efficient but ultimately rather clinical driving style. To put it another way, the GTI with the trick diff laps the Nordschleife eight seconds faster than a car without it. Resistance is futile. The machines have won.

Being out on the road - with more random challenges to deal with and the Provençal shrubbery blurring past - delivers a more realistic tableau. All GTIs come with Driver Profile Selection (DPS) which allows you to tweak steering ‘feel', throttle and DSG shift times (if you have it), but you'll need to stump up another £795 for the Adaptive Chassis Control to take charge of the suspension and damping. On choppy rural French black-top, I opted for Sport in everything bar the suspension; Normal mode is firm enough on the 18in wheels, and I strongly suspect that will be the case in the UK. Bigger 19in wheels are an option, but I wouldn't bother. The GTI in Performance trim does 0-62mph in 6.4 seconds and is done at 155mph, which is more than enough pace. It covers ground with less overt drama than a Ford Focus ST, BMW 135i, Renault Megane RS or Vauxhall Astra VXR, and checks its movements over crests and during unexpected direction changes with ease. The brakes are fine, too. Consequently, you find yourself travelling a fair bit faster than you probably realise. Is the GTI now too refined for its own good? Could be. It flatters the normal driver, which is obviously the point, but if you like your hot hatches a bit more edgy and interactive, it's still a bit... aloof.

Lovely with it, mind you. Try as they might, no one else can craft a car quite like VW. The subtle red grille strip that arrived with the MkV is now all over the shop: in the bi-xenon headlights, the brake calipers, and the tasty little GTI wing badge. As ever, the GTI is a solid-looking article, more chiselled in this latest form, but still with the big wheels and C-pillars and tight shutlines. In the Golf product cycle, this one looks like it's trying harder than the dynamically lumpy but curvy MkIV and generally ace MkV.

Pull the huge and heavy doors - especially on the three-door - shut, and the cabin is distilled essence of VW. There's red in the door sills, on the Alcantara seat facings, in the door rests, and, of course, in the long-running tartan Jacara seat trim (not a clan I've heard of). There's a chunky three-spoke, flat-bottomed wheel, a golf-ball gearknob on a curious supporting structure, black roof-lining and red ambient lighting. It's best-in-class stuff, as is the touchscreen multi-media, which includes DAB as standard, and whose satnav controls spookily appear as your hand nears the screen. The system itself is also excellent, though it is not included as standard.

Other options include bigger 19in Santiago alloys (the standard wheels are called Austin, for no good reason), leather upholstery, the adaptive chassis, Park Assist (ridiculous, but it works) and a Dynaudio sound system with a 10-channel amp and eight speakers. Prices start at £25,845 for the 219bhp three-door, rising to £28,895 for the 229bhp five-door with the DSG. Naturally, the GTI has state-of-the-art active and passive safety systems, many of which - like the pre-crash tech that primes the brakes and airbags if it sniffs an accident - have made the jump from Merc S-Class plutobarge to humbler hatchback in a single generation.

In other words, the new Golf GTI is as sound a bet as ever. But this one feels almost like a risk-averse hot hatch, as though it's holding back a bit from fully expressing itself. Consequently, it's not quite the home run its predecessor was. If the GTI is a barometer of the times, then this one reflects where we're at in 2013. And, as you've probably noticed, it's somewhere pretty serious.