The Volkswagen Golf GTI was the product of brilliant product planning, right? It happened because, as Volkswagen’s savvy futurists assessed the development potential of their front-drive Beetle replacement in the early 1970s, they saw nirvana: an unmet need.
They’d spotted two trends. First, that younger, sportier-minded buyers were embracing front-wheel drive as enthusiastically as they were shunning traditional sports cars such as the then already geriatric MGB. Second, that they were becoming wealthier and more urbanised. Yet there wasn’t a premium sporty car they could aspire to; nothing small and spirited with German cachet at an affordable price, at home and as handy in town as it was a demon on open roads. What VW’s strategists had located was the product planners’ Holy Grail, the unmet need they call Usage Case.
And they had the solution: raid the group parts bin for a gutsier engine, sharpen the suspension, tastefully toughen the looks inside and out, und Bob ist dein Onkel. It was a no-brainer: the product plan was written, enthusiastically approved and the Golf GTI arrived in 1976 to popularise the hot hatch class like no other, if not quite create it, and go on to sell 2.5 million across eight generations so far.
