The Golf GTI once knew glory of a mesmerically high order. It was widely agreed to be the mother and father of all "hot" hatchbacks: a small but perfectly formed, rubber-boiling, spoiler-bending monster, all the more darkly amusing for being related to those other politer Golfs, lower down the range.

The fact (which seems faintly hilarious now) that there was a period when you could hang a ripped-off VW badge around your neck and call it street style owes everything to the out-and-out mischievousness of the original GTI. No self-respecting under-age ram-raider would have entered Woolworth's the hard way in anything less.

Alas, its flame eventually dimmed - and was probably burning too brightly to do anything else. Other hot hatches soon came along that looked a bit hotter. In common with the entire Golf family (and, indeed, with the Beastie Boys), it grew eventually to seem a little old and outpaced, a little lost. Experts agree that there hasn't been a GTI worth busting into with a coathanger and launching through a shop window for more than a decade now.

Here though, following the launch last year of the fifth generation Golf (itself something of a return to form), comes a GTI to bring teenage speed freaks of all ages running: a GTI you can run through a pedestrianised shopping precinct in the early hours of the morning without any loss to your credibility.

The heart of it is a new, turbo-charged 2.0-litre engine, a piece of machinery so responsive that it seems to take its instructions directly from your brain, rather than waiting for the slightly delayed signal to travel down to your foot and get delivered in the conventional way, via the accelerator. The steering, similarly, appears to be in direct contact with your mind, cutting out the middle men - in this case, your arms. The result, rather spookily, is a car that seems to know your intentions as well as you do, if not slightly better - a major step forward, surely, for automotive engineering.

My test model came, of course, with a howlingly bright red paint-job. (You can get a hot hatch in other colours than red if you desire, but you will be guilty of neglecting years of distinguished yob tradition if you do so.) That said, for anyone trying to steal one in the dark, distinguishing a GTI externally from a run-of-the-mill, ordinarily-accelerating Golf is going to be something of a challenge. Here are the two things to look out or feel for: firstly, the honeycomb grille, which helps give the car its "fresh from the penitentiary" look; and secondly, the rear roof spoiler, which juts a sulky lip over the back window. No thunderous air-intakes on the bonnet, then; no panther-scratch marks down the sides and no gravel-hugging skirts.

Which, you could say, was a missed opportunity. Alternatively, the fact that the GTI doesn't advertise its wild and crazy hotness from its own roof in giant neon letters could be regarded as a touch of cool or, at any rate, a handy disguise. It's a war machine but, cunningly, it's in civvies.

Inside, the evidence that you are in a souped-up Golf comes at you rather thicker. There are the drilled-steel pedals, for one thing, daringly minimalist in a Stirling Moss kind of a way. Then there are the deeply recessed, retro circular clocks and the sinister, leather-clad seats. And the steering wheel rather sexily stops describing a circle and flattens out at the bottom - presumably so you can get a seriously firm purchase during those truly outrageous, 360-degree wheel-throws, and also so you will have no excuse for forgetting which way up the steering wheel is meant to be.

For those little bursts of pace that get you out of trouble in multi-lane traffic, it is pretty much unbeatable. For those extended bursts of pace that get you up motorways without ever being overtaken, it's pretty impressive, too.

All in all, the new GTI amply fulfils the key hot-hatch criterion: it drives like a really good sports car. Except, of course, you can only get two people into a sports car - and slightly fewer than that, if one of them is fat. Whereas the GTI has all the natural Golf-ly advantages of proper passenger space, an acoustically refined hi-fi and a boot that will hold the family shopping and/or your DJ decks and a suitcase of vinyl.

Plus, of course, it comes with the unmistakable lustre of delinquency. Even when you are in the car perfectly legitimately, and have on hand the relevant documentation to prove as much, it still feels like you have nicked it. It appears to command driving gloves. Also, a reversed Burberry baseball cap and possibly an electronic ankle tag - if not now, then at some point in the near future.