Simply put, I don't like hating on stuff. But I just can't, in good confidence, be all lovey-dovey and gushy over the 2024 Mk8 Golf GTI after the three-ish weeks I just spent driving it.

The Mk8 Golf GTI has been taken off sale as we await the Mk8.5, but it was priced from just under £40,000 when it was available – a healthy sum given the base GTI's relatively tame power output.

With the new Mk8.5 Golf arriving for 2025, Volkswagen killed off its manual hot hatches. That's in spite of clear customer demand.

As with all Golf ... Mk7.5 GTI isn’t the simplest of tasks given the multitude of models in recent years, but against the old GTI Performance five-door manual (the closest match) the Mk8 is ...

Hiding within the eighth-generation Golf GTI was a truly great hot hatch. Yet it was one that didn’t get the praise it deserved owing to some errors made by Volkswagen on the Mk8 Golf as a whole.