Development of The Hot Hatch
The car that popularised the concept of the hot hatch is the 1976 Volkswagen Golf GTI, announced at the 1975 Frankfurt Motor Show. However, the Golf GTI was not the first hot hatch with several cars from the early seventies starting the trend of sportier versions of mainstream hatchbacks such as the Simca 1100 Ti which was available on sale Europe-wide by 1974. Another early hot hatch was the Renault 5 Alpine which first went on sale in May 1976 and also pre-dated sales of the Volkswagen Golf GTi, by two months.
The Volkswagen Golf GTI, with the addition of a higher performance 1.6 litre fuel injected engine, sharper handling, and sports-focused marketing, helped create the birth of a huge market for small, practical cars that still had excellent performance. The Golf GTI enjoyed a short run of unparalleled sales success, but by the early 1980s, car manufacturers worldwide were racing to market with their own alternatives.
Until the early 1980s, the Volkswagen Golf Mk1 GTI and the Renault 5 Alpine/Gordini dominated the retrospectively named hot hatch market segment in many European markets. However, competition was not entirely limited to non-hatchbacks, the various sports versions of the Mini, Alfa Romeo Alfasud and race-inspired enthusiasts' vehicles such as the 135 bhp (101 kW) Vauxhall Chevette HS providing sporting performance in a non-coupe body. Other hatchbacks which conformed to the new hatchback format included the 1978 Chrysler/Talbot Sunbeam Ti with 99 bhp (74 kW; 100 PS) and brisker acceleration than the Golf and followed a year later by the 2.2 litre Talbot Lotus Sunbeam offered a then astonishing 150 bhp (112 kW) and a 0-60 mph time of around 6.8 seconds,, Peugeot 104 ZS and Simca 1100 TI (1974).
Read more about this topic: Hot Hatch
Famous quotes containing the words development of the, development of, development, hot and/or hatch:
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Good schools are schools for the development of the whole child. They seek to help children develop to their maximum their social powers and their intellectual powers, their emotional capacities, their physical powers.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“Theories of child development and guidelines for parents are not cast in stone. They are constantly changing and adapting to new information and new pressures. There is no “right” way, just as there are no magic incantations that will always painlessly resolve a child’s problems.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“A woman is like a teabag—only in hot water do you realize how strong she is.”
—Nancy Reagan (b. 1923)
“He looked at Senator Hatch and said, “I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ until she cries.” And I looked at him and said, “Senator Helms, your singing would make me cry if you sang ‘Rock of Ages’.””
—Carol Moseley-Braun (b. 1947)