Volkswagen Up GTI 2020 UK first drive

It’s the revised VW Up GTI: a car made slightly pricier but no perkier to drive. That’s the short version of what has been done to Volkswagen’s smallest hot hatchback for the 2020 model year. Fans needn’t fear that the overall appeal of the car has been altered, though: it has mostly just been preserved for another showroom stint.

The hot Up attracted a long waiting list after its launch in January 2018, which VW struggled to satisfy with a limited right-hand-drive car allocation. That, combined with a looming WLTP emissions deadline, meant the old car was effectively withdrawn from sale in April 2019.

Now that it’s come back, this is one of the first VWs to get the firm’s redesigned brand logo. The lettering is slightly slimmer, although the colour scheme is the same chrome-on-black affair as previously.

Otherwise, the car is exactly as it was outwardly, with those double side stripes, 17in alloy wheels, black mirror caps and that impish little black bi-plane spoiler being the distinguishing features. Now, as before, I’d say it has just enough visual attitude: sufficient to set it apart at second glance, but not so much as to risk looking daft or to over-promise about the driving experience it offers. Nicely judged.

On the inside, the car remains mostly as it was, too. Those GTI-trademark Jacara checked cloth seats have been retained, likewise the attractive red-spotted dashboard decoration. Alongside other versions of the car, the GTI gets a camera-based active lane-keeping system (with a handy button that, mercifully, makes it easy to turn off) as well as curtain airbags as standard. The 5.0in ‘composition colour’ infotainment system is retained. It’s light on features and functionality but is cleverly partnered with a vice-like phone mount so you can fix your smartphone on the dashboard and use all of the navigation and connected entertainment features thereon. A no-nonsense, bargain-basement driver’s car really doesn’t need more.

Nothing has officially been changed about the Up GTI’s driving experience – nothing that VW has felt the need to communicate, at any rate – and that’s mostly to be celebrated. This makes an amusing feeder hot hatchback partly as a result of its limitations rather than in spite of them and it has character in abundance.

Three years ago, VW lowered and stiffened the standard car’s suspension for this application, widening the axles tracks only by fitting 17in alloys with less positive wheel offset than the standard car’s. It certainly didn’t over-endow the car with outright grip or body control. As a result, outputs of 114bhp and 148lb ft felt like more than enough, in 2018, to enliven and examine the car’s chassis on a proper road - and they still do.