2024 VW GTI

It’s the last call. The final hurrah. Call it what you will, it amounts to the same.

Right now – this year – is the last time you’ll be able to buy a new VW GTI without an automatic transmission.

When the 2025 GTI comes out, it will come with an automatic only. For the first time, ever. So if you prefer to shift for yourself, time is short to get off the couch – and grab a ’24 GTI while you can still get one.

What It Is

The GTI is kind of like the Ford Mustang in that it created a new category of vehicle. The 1964 Mustang was the first pony car; the 1983 GTI was the first hot hatch.

In both cases, there were many emulators – but only one original.

Which may be why both are still around – even though most of the emulators (all of them, in Mustang’s case) are gone.

Like the original 1983 model, the current model is based on the Golf hatchback (called Rabbit back then) but this time with five rather than just three doors.

As always, the focus is on performance – and fun – more so than economy.

Interestingly, VW no longer sells the Golf in this country. The last year if was offered was 2021. It’s interesting because it’s usually the case that sales of the standard model – without the performance upgrades – make it possible to sell the higher-cost performance model without it costing too much, such that too many people who might like to buy one can’t afford to.

The volume seller carries the lower-volume “halo” car – and the lower priced version gives those who can’t afford the “halo” car just yet something to aspire to owning.

The current GTI is now is effectively an entry-luxury sporty car rather than a hotted-up economy car.

Prices for the ’24 GTI start at $31,695 for the base S trim; it comes standard with a turbocharged 2.0 liter four cylinder engine paired with a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission.

A six speed manual transmission is standard in the $32,685 380 S – with the same 2.0 liter engine – plus an adaptive suspension, 19 inch wheels and high-performance “summer” tires plus gloss black trim.

A top-of-the-line 380 Autobahn lists for $40,825 and includes the “380” performance upgrades plus heated rear seats, three-zone climate control, leather trim, a larger (10 inch) LCD touchscreen and a premium nine-speaker Harman Kardon audio system.

What’s New For 2024

The 380 package is a new – and soon-to-gone – package that bundles the last-call six-speed manual with the related performance and cosmetic upgrades detailed above.

What’s Good

One of the few new sporty five-doors that’s still available with a manual.

Much more practical than two-door sporty cars with manuals that cost about the same, such as the Mazda Miata and the Subaru BRZ.

Easy on gas – if you don’t have a heavy right foot.

What’s Not So Good

No more manuals after the end of this year.

Manual costs more than the standard automatic.

No longer inexpensive fun.

Under The Hood

Every 2024 GTI comes standard with the same 2.0 liter, turbocharged four cylinder engine that makes 241 horsepower – and there’s nothing particularly unusual about that. What makes the 2024 GTI very unusual is that you can still pair the 2.0 liter engine with a six speed manual transmission.

There are very few sporty cars left that still offer that option – including other hot hatches such as the Mazda3 – which is available with a larger (2.5 liter) and stronger (250 horsepower) turbocharged engine – paired with all-wheel-drive, which the front-wheel-drive-only VW does not offer.

But Mazda doesn’t offer a manual transmission. The Mini Cooper – another hot hatch – still does but not for long. The 2025 model will be automatic-only.

And so – sadly – will the 2025 GTI.

Interestingly, it’s not because the manual-equipped version uses more gas and so hurts VW’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) score, creating an “incentive” to drop the manual from the roster. In fact, the six-speed GTI’s mileage – 23 city, 34 highway is essentially identical to the automatic (seven speed dual clutch) GTI’s 24 city, 33 highway.

So why is VW taking the manual off the table? Especially in view of the fact that without a manual, the GTI loses much of its appeal to the enthusiast buyers who prefer to shift for themselves?

Probably – and this is just an informed guess, based on this writer’s three decades of covering the industry and by dint of that having acquired a kind of Spider Sense that suggests to me what might be going on – VW’s very public commitment to become primarily a manufacturer of battery-powered devices (which don’t have transmissions at all) is not enhanced by manual-equipped cars such as the GTI because the latter present too much of a contrasting experience that isn’t favorable to the experience one gets by driving a device.

Put another way, maybe VW wants to get its buyers used to driving a vehicle that has fewer controls and requires less of them as drivers.

Whether I’m right about that or not, the manual GTI will soon be history – and that may, in turn result in the GTI itself becoming history.

On The Road

The thing about a manual-equipped vehicle is the intangibles.

Automatics are the opposite of them, which may be part of the reason why they’re being pushed. An automatic’s shift timing and accuracy can be quantified objectively in ways that shifting for yourself can’t be. How do you convey – by the numbers – how it feels to release the clutch just right? To snap off a perfectly timed shift, yourself? The answer is you can’t convey it – at least, not in the way that it is possible to convey that a seven speed dual clutch automatic can shift from first to second in however many fractions of a second and that it will never miss a shift.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel better to shift-for-yourself.

The GTI with the six speed has that feel, soon to be felt no more. With the soon-to-be-inescapable automatic, the GTI feels less personal.

More like the rest.

Selecting from one of the four available drive programs – Eco, Comfort, Normal or Sport – is not the same experience as selecting third – or better yet, second – when you’re in fourth, getting the engine into just the spot in its powerband where you want it to be and holding it there until you decide to grab whatever gear’s next. Just as it’s not the same to floor the accelerator as it is to floor it and let off the clutch at the same moment.

You can still do that, for the moment. But that moment is soon to be over and then what the GTI was will be a memory.

It seems clear VW wants the GTI to align more with the feel of the electric vehicles in its lineup. This goes deeper than the pending elimination of the last mechanical control the driver had over the drivetrain. There’s an electronic feel to all of the other controls, too. You push a button to start/stop the engine – as opposed to turning a key. Drive or Reverse are selected via a small toggle switch in the center console. Park is a button. So is the parking brake, which is now electric. No more pulling up on the emergency brake lever that’s not there anymore – to lock up the rear wheels and execute the kind of right-angle turns that are regarded as “unsafe” by today’s Safety Culture.

Without the manual – and with almost everything else no longer mechanical – one focuses more on tangibles such as the GTI’s power/performance, both of which are good but not much superior to other automatic-only rivals such as the Mazda3 and the Mini Cooper.

And then there’s the new Toyota Corolla GR. Which is a car more like the GTI was – and soon won’t be anymore. Comparisons are inevitable – and while the GTI still has a lot going for it, the Corolla has less (and more) in at least two categories.

First, the Corolla GR has much more power – 300 horsepower out of just 1.6 liters. And it does not offer an automatic. It comes only with a six speed manual – and AWD is standard.

It is without question what the original ’83 GTI was – a hot hatch – as well as the hottest hatch you can buy new for $36k or so.

At The Curb

Cars have gotten much larger – and much heavier – since the time of the original GTI back in 1983. This includes the current GTI, which has five doors rather than three, as the original did. And – by the standards of 1983 – the current GTI would be considered a near mid-sized car rather than a subcompact, as the original was.

The latter was just 155.3 inches long and rode on a very short 94.5 inch wheelbase. It also weighed just 2,100 lbs. Which probably accounts for why it managed 29 MPG in city driving and 37 on the highway – both numbers significantly higher than the current GTI delivers. Probably because it weighs 1,000 pounds more (3,137 lbs. to be precise) and it’s just a much a bigger – and longer – car. It’s 168.8 inches end to end and it rides on a comparatively limousine-like 103.6 inch wheelbase.

It also has more than twice the power of the original ’83 GTI’s 90 horsepower, 1.8 liter engine. And it doesn’t take 9.7 seconds to get to 60.

It is also a much more sophisticated, much more comfortable car. In part because the Golf it’s based upon would be considered a luxury car by the standards of 1983. Whereas the ’83 Rabbit the original ’83 GTI was based on was an economy car, in the truest meaning of that word back then.

The GTI enhancement made it lots of fun. But it was still a fun economy car.

The current GTI is an entry-luxury sporty car – and you get what you pay more for. Including a “bridge” that looks like Mr. Data’s station on board the Starship Enterprise, with a flat screen main gauge panel and another to your right to tap/swipe control everything else.

The original ’83 did not even come standard with AC. Today, you get heated seats – and standard 18 inch (rather than 14 inch) wheels. You can also get three-zone climate control AC and a heads-up (GUF) display, something that would have been considered magical back in ’83.

Of course, you do pay for all of that.

Back in ’83, all you paid was about $8,400 – which works out to about $27k today. And that’s actually not much less than what you pay today. The real-money difference between then and now is about $5k – and that gets you a lot more today.

Assuming, of course, you want it – and don’t mind paying for it.

The Rest

Not all the news is bad news. It looks like the ’25 GTI may get a power bump – up to 262 horsepower – and drivers will get more control over the automatic transmission that will be the next GTI’s only available transmission, in the form of paddle shifters that allow a degree of electronic control over when the automatic shifts up and down – within the parameters of its programming.

The Bottom Line

This hatch is still hot – but it’ll be different, soon.

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