In the process, the Golf became nearly as ubiquitous as the Beetle it replaced as a result of that appeal. The good news here is that the Mk1 Golf still delivers joy at a half-century since its ...

The final design of the Golf was known as the Type 17. The Golf Mk1 went into production in March 1974, and sales officially began in May of the same year. About a year later, the hatchback ...

There had been tuned versions of family cars before the Golf, like the Mini Cooper S, for example, but the Mk1 GTI defined the template for the modern hot hatch. It combined performance and ...

Ask any performance car enthusiast under 35 what their first fast car was and there’s a good chance they will respond with the name of a hot hatch of some kind. But their answer would be very ...