The idea of a “hot hatchback” has been part of the automotive landscape from the birth of the Mini-Cooper and this video from the fine folks at Goodwood which outlines the history of the concept and all the foundational models of the 1970s is spectacular. There’s something fun about a fast little hatchback car and buyers have bought millions and millions of them over the years. The Golf GTI is absolutely the most famous hot hatch of the early days but it was not the first one out. Companies like Simca, Renault, and others threw into the concept of the sports minded small car before the Germans definitively defined the genre of car.
We look at the automotive landscape today and so few of what we look at has any sort of sensical relationship to things that were made in the 1970s but the hot hatch backs still have the same DNA they always did and they are better in so many was than they ever were.
As a guy who spent a few years in college racing a hotted up VW Rabbit with my friends in the SCCA, perhaps my opinion is biased to the value and entertainment of these little things but the video below tells a really cool story in a very well laid out, researched, and appealing delivery.
Automotive history is the best history.
