2017 Volkswagen Golf GTI

The GTI is in fine fettle. In material terms, at least as far as most petrolheads would care, it hasn’t changed much. But considering how much the hot hatch market has transformed around the GTI of late, it’s probably a bolder move on VW’s part to leave the car so unaltered than it might have been to follow the crowd, by dialling up the horsepower, chassis rates and price tag. Thank heavens they didn’t.

Volkswagen has pumped up the GTI’s power output by just 10bhp – enough to cut its 0-62mph acceleration claim by a solitary tenth of a second, and to add just 2mph to its top speed. That gives the standard GTI’s 2.0-litre turbo engine the same 227bhp peak of power that the outgoing GTI had when fitted with VW’s optional Performance Pack.

A new Performance Pack will be launched for the facelifted car later this spring, boosting the GTI’s power to 242bhp and likely adding the same electronically controlled slippy diff to the car’s specification, along with one or two other things. The standard GTI, meanwhile, continues with the same variable-rate ‘progressive’ power steering rack as before, and the same passive sports suspension, which can be upgraded to adaptively damped Dynamic Chassis Control suspension for an extra cost.

A pair of excellent leather sports seats, decorated with some attractive new red piping, awaited in our test car. It was also fitted with the Golf’s new top-of-the-line 9.2in Discover Pro infotainment system and its new 12.3in digital instrument cluster: like the leather seats, the former is optional-fit. The central infotainment set-up has a bright, crisp-looking widescreen display and, for the first time in any car this size, is navigable via gesture control. However, I’m not sure it’s an unqualified improvement on what went before, VW having dropped the handy rotary knobs for volume control and map zoom and switched to a touchscreen-dominated control logic that can be fiddly and distracting. The new digital instruments aren’t as impressive-looking or easy-to-customise as they are on Audi’s Virtual Cockpit, either, although they’re still pretty good. Otherwise, the GTI’s cabin is almost unchanged. Material quality is high, the driving position is excellent, interior space is good; the attention to detail lavished on the underlying product – the humble Golf – really shines through.

There are more exciting rivals when you're on the limit; that’s undeniable. But the brilliantly judged sweetness of the Golf GTI’s ride and handling compromise, plus its remarkable completeness not just as a driver’s car but as a premium product, continues to demand consideration by those who want a hot hatchback cooked with a classic recipe.

This is a car positioned at the nexus of value, desirability, usability, road-appropriate performance and dynamic sophistication, and accessible driver reward. And, since an increasing number of once-great hot hatch-purveying car makers appear to have forgotten as much - as if this car's incredible forty-year success story didn't make it plain enough - that’s exactly where a hot hatch ought to abide.