It’s been a week of cars. Thursday saw me at Canary Wharf for the Motorexpo, while today saw us at Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground for GTI International.
Celebrating its 20th year in 2007, the UK’s longest-running event for performance Volkswagens has become a bit of a yearly club thing for us over the last 11 years or so. Usually praising the virtues of VW’s one-time smallest car at the show, this year we decided not to have a club stand, while some even ducked out of the event altogether.
Which, for many reasons, was what I was going to do, until the invititation arrived from the lovely people in the Volkswagen UK Press Office. The promise of good food, welcoming hospitality, and the chance to blast two hot Golfs down the quarter-mile sprint track proved too much to resist.
Arriving later than in previous years enabled us to set our own pace, and once inside the gates and past the austere retired Cold War aircraft fleet, we were waved through to the control tower. Here, the VW press team had set up camp for the day, to entertain the troops from the tribe journo.
It really was an enjoyable afternoon, and we were treated very well, ferried from the press area to the trackside vistas by luxurious and leather-trimmed Caravelles.
Once again, cars of many colours were the order of the day, the organisers expecting around 10,000 hot VWs (and 20,000 VW fans), to have driven and walked over the now-pitted runways by the time the gates closed at the end of the weekend. Originally an event for Golf GTIs, these days all manner of souped-up Polos and other water-cooled Volkswagens turn up, with handfuls of Audis and SEATS sprinkled in for good measure.
VW had pulled out all the stops to get the new super-Golf concept GTI W12-650 over to these shores, too, especially for the event. Though not looking quite as breathtaking as it does in the official publicity photos, it was still an impressive sight, and could have lifted its petticoats to more than show the other very powerful and homegrown super-Golfs a very clean (and distant) pair of exhaust pipes.
My blasts down the drag strip were exciting, but over in a flash, and certainly got the adrenaline flowing. A pair of Golfs – GTI Edition 30 and R32 – had been chosen to set 0 to 60mph times in, and they were both very different.
The more powerful R32 fed in the acceleration instantly, turning the lines of spectators (and everything else) into a coloured blur, while the Edition 30 seemed to suffer from turbo lag, feeding in the power suddenly with an almighty surge. The effect was the same, though, but I’m sure my fluffing of the clever DSG flappy-paddle gearbox did my time no favours.
But, as a spot of Sunday mid-afternoon excitement, it was hard to beat.
And despite lots of shiny new cars, even as we joined the queue for the two-hour trip home, my old Polo didn’t feel so bad. Yes, it might not be the rudest of health at the moment (that’s a whole other blog post), but it did the job admirably enough and ferried us home safe and sound.
Meanwhile, yesterday was spent mooching and movie watching. And, even the Bond film of choice began with an M. Moonraker blasted us into space for two hours of nonsense, and continued my education of all things British secret agent.
Mr Bond wouldn’t have looked out of place hiding from villains among the aircraft at Bruntingthorpe, and could probably have even rustled up a gadget to find us more time to go and look at the Harriers, Jaguars, and Vulcans.
Mooching, movies, and motion: a weekend of Ms. And, if you include the line of cars leaving the show, one of queues, too.
