I have been waiting for the VW Golf GTI, because the boy – it would be a stretch to call him a man – I liked in 1991 had one. He used to drive me round Regent’s Park in his Golf GTI, and although he went to St Paul’s Boys School and was a religious Jew, I thought this made him seem dangerous. I knew nothing. Behind the ambivalent smile his secret was this: he really cared about maths. My sister has a Golf now.
The Golf is the bestselling European car of all time. Globally, only the Toyota Corolla (compact) and the Ford F-Series (truck) beat it: 37 million Golfs have been sold since 1974, which is the equivalent of every single person in Poland owning one, including the babies. It’s 52, as I am: the defining car of Generation X’s good fortune and hope. The Golf GTI – Grand Touring Injection (or ‘Gran Turismo Iniezione’: it sounds better in Italian) – is only 50, so this is a birthday drive.
I owned an ancient VW Polo once, and loved it, but no one could accuse it of being fast. By the time I bought it – 2006 plate, I think – it was like driving a sheep. The GTI’s top speed is 155mph – 0-62mph in 5.6 seconds – and its official designation remains small family car. This makes me laugh until I remember it really is a small family car: 37 million Polish babies can’t be wrong; nor can my sister.
It’s a beautiful thing, both neat and broad: bright white, like my friend Richard’s teeth. It has a lovely stance, and a quality of waiting and prowling. It’s the Clubsport variant, which means faster and hotter than the common GTI: a 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine and 296 horsepower.
It behaves normally in Penzance. For the first five minutes I even find it faintly sluggish. Then I take it to the random piece of dual carriageway near Morrison’s – dual carriageway is rationed in west Cornwall so it looks like a beached aircraft carrier – hit the accelerator and scream. It was like the time the Daily Mail strapped me to the top of a light aircraft because it is ambivalent about women – by the time I stopped screaming I was in the sky. I can’t speak for London, but it’s a perfect rural car. I speed into the bends avoiding rabbits – and this year, herring gulls; lack of wind makes them lethargic, and they fly low – and it takes it. It’s a beautiful drive for slightly over £40,000. As Tolkien said to Lewis: myths are true.
Still, Cornish roads are hellish. I return from Porthcurno on the A30, not the tiny road with passing places the visitors do not know how to use: neither the Golf nor I will reverse into a bush while people who own camper vans abuse us. This happened to my friend. It was like watching a Winnebago shout at a tricycle for being fat. ‘You don’t know how big your car is!’ he screamed. She did actually. Instead, we zoom along the A30 until we meet the single narrow part, and, as in a nightmare, two tractors come towards us. I want to cry. I live here and I know my duty. I reverse into the bush. The first tractor approaches. I reverse further into the bush. I look at the tractor and know we will not make it. The paintwork the colour of my friend Richard’s teeth will not survive the contact, though it must, and not just because it belongs to VW. This car is a boy at heart: an Essex boy. If it had a face, it would wash it. If it had chest hair, it would shave it. If it had a shirt, it would iron it. I make a choice. I get out of the Golf and run towards the tractor. I scream. ‘Help me!’
This car is a boy at heart: an Essex boy. If it had a face, it would wash it. If it had chest hair, it would shave it
He is a ruddy boy. He is properly Cornish, a small to medium giant: that is, he looks like he could casually strangle a cow. He smiles. ‘Nice Golf,’ he says. He gets out and examines it. He strokes its paintwork. He eyes its headlights. I tell him two things. First, it is not my car. (I don’t want to think about why I say this, so I don’t.) Second, I am not from London. I am from London, of course, and we both know it. I mean – I am not a visitor. I don’t irritate the native Cornish part-time: I am always here. He leaps into the tractor and drives it into his bush – we each have one, there is a glut of bushes in Cornwall – and passes the Golf without contact. He waves goodbye: to the Golf.
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