Bez1969

A few months ago, I read an article in Performance car where they suggested the classic Uk impreza now felt a bit slow against the latest hot hatches. Having bought mine, I know what they mean, the new GTI's dont have the turbo lag and the six gears makes them feel quicker.

However, anyone got any practical experiences of whether a Mk1 standard car can still mix it or beat, say a MK5 Golf GTI or equivalent? I suspect the Focus ST may be of a similar performance....

Henstone

You mean the Golf R32?
Volkswagen Golf R32 - 3.2 V6 R32 4MOTION 3d - Facts & Figures - Parker's

Apparently does 0-60 in exactly the same speed as my ukturbo.

Pretty good website to check out cars, i've probably just showed you the wrong thing but oh well lol.

172sport

iTrader: (6)

LOL its the lardy late model cars that should be worried..........

Most UK cars where toned down anyway, go JDM no problems then.

N_Scooby

iTrader: (2)

Yes! New hot hatches are almost as heavy because of modern crash testing, may have roughly the same power but don't have the 4-wheel drive to put it down to the tarmac and with a little playing with the suspension will out handle most fwd cars on the twisties. Lower powered uk specs and newage WRX's will struggle though.

Tim - Classic (biased) owner

EddScott

A classic running a true 300bhp should be more than enough for most modern GTIs

The Chief

The 0-100 of a boggo standard Classic is under 16 seconds, an R32 MK5 is nearly 17 seconds. it would trounce the standard Mk5 GTI which is nearly 18 seconds, only the Astra VXR comes close, thing is as soon as you put a few mods (which lets face it most people do) then even a 250-260 bhp (ish) Classic becomes a formidable car especially on acceleration and its mid range puch out of corners.

Gti's will give you a run for your money as they've come a long way in the last few years but you wont get slaughtered, Remember the original Impreza goes back to the early nineties - so not bad for a 15 year old plus car!

Oh and i wont even mention the twisties

Microstar

If you are talking about a standard unmodded Classic against a modern GTi (2.0T with FSI engine) then its no contest, the GTi would win hands down.
The 2.0TFSI engines are direct injection and have a fantastic spread of torque - almost flat from 1800-5000+ rpm coupled with very little turbo lag. Its a different driving experience altogether, whatever the 0-60 times say. The chassis on the latest VAG cars (A5 platform) is also very well sorted.
IIRC didn't one of the TV shows (5th Gear??) show a Golf GTi beating a MY08 STi around a track.

Obviously a modded Classic may well be faster, but of course the GTi can be remapped etc too, so you have to compare like with like. The advantage that the Subaru would have is that as the power goes up they still get the traction, whereas a FWD starts to struggle. On the VAG cars I reckon there is torque limiting in 1st gear to improve traction which can make the O-60 times look artificially slow. Having driven both cars fairly extensively the GTi is a lot lot quicker in day to day driving and gives pretty good economy too. Its just the onward march of technology and product improvement.

The Chief

Its the old variables again - what would it beat it at?

Top speed, acceleration, track times, point to point on road ability?

The GTI is a fine car but i believe a standard Classic would beat it on everything bar top speed and perhaps acceleration above 100mph.

But hey, i may be wrong.

172sport

iTrader: (6)

Mmmm the Impreza doesnt come close in the twisties tbh, a 172 would kill it round corners or under the brakes but it has no grunt or potential for any really. The Impreza will win every time out of corners, and acceleration.

The Chief

It depends on the suspension setup tyres, road or track conditions etc. as soon as any sort of crappy road conditions present themselves then hot hatches are in trouble. as for the brakes - i'll agree on that score as standard they are shocking!!!

172sport

iTrader: (6)

Like for like i.e. out the box.

The impreza always pulls away on acceleration and top speed potential, but i would drive around one on the corners

The Chief

It depends who's driving

172sport

iTrader: (6)

LOL, maybe

Peanuts

iTrader: (15)

Impreza has the advantage from zero due to increased traction, but thats it.

The Chief

I've said in other posts that a lot of factors and variables come into play.

Unless a car has a lot of horsepower or power weight advantage then neither will pull away convincingly, 30-40 bhp is bugger all on the road.

You have to take into consideration traction, power to weight, gearing, transmission loss and as speeds get higher aerodynamics.

Whatever way you look at it cars like the Subaru and Evo are devastating point to point cars in the right hands.

555wrxra

i take it from the post that they are comparing a new gti vs a an old uk 2000 scobby, which from stock is lame imo, why did they water down the uk cars so much? (as we all know few mods can sort that) could the same be said for new gti vs new uk wrx!??

who cares any ways that golf wont corner or sound like a scobby plus every other car you see has a VW badge on it,

MikeCardiff

iTrader: (2)

Really the fair test would be on price - after all, how much more does a VXR, Focus ST or new GTi cost compared to a 10 year old classic ?

Anyone can say 'my cars faster than yours' but if they paid 5 times as much for their car then its pretty academic as if you had unlimited money to throw at a car, yours would be the fastest. ( As is proved by someone I know who spent the best part of £100K modifying his Skyline - most supercars would have had a hard time keeping up with it, but then you'd expect that as his car cost almost the same ! )

Get a new GTi, then get a classic that has had the extra £10K or so spent on it, and I dont think the VW driver is going to be anywhere near the same league.

banny sti

iTrader: (68)

I have probably spent about 10k on my car and is currently at 450bhp, no hot hatch of any flavour even comes close

Banny

172sport

iTrader: (6)

Been there done that,
A mate had a so-called 400bhp EVO 9 . Lets just say he wouldnt believe my scoob was std engine power, I made it to the pub 5-10 mins before him and boy was he trying. LOL
You cant beat the coast road Grimsby to Skegness to sort out any handling/power issues LOL
He's bought himself a new RS4 now, roll on next year and the trackdays, always nice to have a target............ Lets see if money wins this time HaHa.

Aztec Performance Ltd

iTrader: (234)

I think the slowest std classic is 14s 0-100mph

scoobzie

the fast car won who cares there is always some one out there with more under the bonnet just enjoy what you have

vindaloo

Main issue is in roll-on acceleration IMO... Though it's not that old-skool... The Impreza's turbo installation is way long in the tooth.

Less so with the TD04 based models but with the IHI turbos, boost threshold and lag are a real issue, especially on STIs where the stock compression ratio drops to 8.0:1.

J.

New_scooby_04

iTrader: (4)

Wise words

martwrxsl

A 1993 uk turbo had 208bhp and weighed 1200kg. A mk5 (3 door) lardy golf gti weights 1360kg and has 197bhp. So much for the newer gti's catching up. You can do the same comparison with the lardy focus st that weighs something like 1450kg has 222bhp. Ford said it was something like 1375kg but they lied about it for some reason.

All the cars have crap 2 pot brakes on the front.

Handling wise, the classic impreza would stay will the other two. In the wet it would leave the two newer hot hatches fighting for traction.

teamheath2

iTrader: (1)

I have a standard UK Turbo 2000 MY98 and haven't really come up against any of these yet but reckon I could hold my own no trouble, considering I wasn't far off new M3 not too long back.

Microstar

The number of caliper pistons ('pots') does not determine braking performance. The brakes on a MkV Golf GTi or Focus ST are comfortably better than anything every fitted at the Subaru factory. There is nothing crap about Golf GTi brakes, in contrast to the MY08 WRX, which is still underbraked IMHO. I reckon the best Impreza brakes were the newage four-pots, but they still weren't as good as they should have been for the car's performance.

I wonder how many of the people sounding off about these cars have actually owned or even driven one? Cars have improved massively in the past 10 years and VAG have made an incredibly good job of the GTi. Traction is not generally a problem because of the ASR and ESP. Turbo-lag is almost non-existent. Years back I owned a couple of the old Classic turbo models, but they do not compare to modern hot hatches. The one area they would win out is on a greasy/slippery surface, purely by virtue of the AWD system. AWD gives extra traction, but don't confuse traction with lateral grip.

martwrxsl

The number of caliper pistons does determine braking performance. If you have two smaller pistons each side as opposed to one the load is spread over a greater surface area, hence more friction area touching between pad and disc. Better stopping distance. Please tell me I'm wrong.

I can't think of any car with over 400bhp that has extremely large 2 pots at the front! Can you?

And I have driven all the cars above.

New_scooby_04

iTrader: (4)

The simple fact of the matter is that modern GTis have bridged the performance gap that used to exist between STANDARD uk turbos as STANDARD GTis, but it took em about 15 years to catch up! The performance bar for GTis has certainly been raised!

However, do not be fooled into thinking that either car will "embarrass" the other or anything like that! In most instances it will be a very close call! Just as the owner of a std classic scooby cannot dismiss a GTi the GTi owner underestimates the classic scooby at their peril! It may be old and a bit crude, but by god is it still effective!

The difference is that FWD has limits and they're pretty much near what is realistically achieveable now. I've yet to drive a FWD hot hatch that can put the power down anywhere near as well an Impreza/Evo out of the corners, when it's wet etc... All of them have to have their torque outputs limited in 1st and second to prevent rampant wheel spin (and that's with just the low 200s of bhp and torque). With an AWD car, the lot can be used in the lower gears, meaning that in a straight line it'll most likely press home a lead to legal limits that the FWD car will simply not be able to make up. It will always have better traction in a straight line and the corners

When you modify a FWD car to make it more powerful, the limitations of the layout become more obvious, whereas AWD cars will happily take more grunt. You cannot beat the laws of physics: a car accelerates and weight shifts to the back, away from the tyres that need the traction to transfer the grunt to the road. Also, making the wheels that are expected to steer the car also deploy ALL the power is inevitably going to corrupt the steering. You can engineer clever solutions to mitigate the effect (I eagerly await the revo knuckle suspension employed in the new Focus RS), but it's a problem that doesn't rear its ugly head with AWD and RWD.

Ns04

phil84

Agree especially with that 1st bit.

I thought traction = grip

Don't forget all these GTI's are new(ish) compared to uk turbos. We will see how they cope with the same amount of braking abuse over time.

The 2 pot brakes are s**te fair enough, but depending on your driving style they are adequate!! (std car)

New_scooby_04

iTrader: (4)

Traction and grip are different mate. The former is where AWD has the big advantage.

Ns04