The Waning of Fahrvergnügen

When the VW GTI came out half a century ago, it created a new category of vehicle – the hot hatch. That is to say, an economy car that was more than just economical. It was also fun. The Germans have a word for this that does not translate into a single English word. It is fahrvergnügen. It means the fun (enjoyment) of driving. As in for its own sake – not merely to get from A to B. A bus does that, too – but there’s not much fahrvergnügen to be experienced.

The first – and subsequent – GTIs were not like that. VW took the Rabbit (also called Golf) and hotted up the engine, firmed up the suspension and made it a lot more fun to drive. It is interesting to note that the early GTIs were not especially powerful – or fast. By today’s standards – by the numbers – a mid-’80s GTI doesn’t come across like much fun. Its engine only made about 110 horsepower and it took about 9 seconds for the GTI of that era to reach 60 MPH. There is nothing you can buy today that’s that slow – or has that little power. But there’s not much you can buy today that’s as fun as that GTI was. Put another way, power isn’t the same thing as fun. It can be fun, of course. It is not the essential thing that makes a car fun.

VW had a word for what was.

The early GTI was one of many fun cars that weren’t very powerful or very quick but which still put a smile on your face – which is something a 200 plus horsepower crossover appliance that can get to 60 in six seconds isn’t nearly as likely to do. Neither is an EV, no matter how powerful and quick it is.

Dodge got an education about this in the form of the sale disaster that happened after it decided to turn the popular Charger into a battery-powered device. The EV Charger was much more powerful – and quicker – than the Charger with an engine that got cancelled after the end of the 2023 model year. The assumption was – apparently – that it was power/performance that sold people on the Charger and that it didn’t matter what the source of that power/performance was. Put another way, it did not – so they thought – matter that the engine was not there anymore because more power/performance was.

It turned out they were very wrong about that.

VW ought to have learned from that. Instead, it is in the process of repeating the same mistake. The next generation GTI is a device. It has twice the power (223 horsepower) of the first-generation GTI and is much quicker (0-60 in just over six seconds) but is it fun? Does it possess fahrvergnügen? 

How could it?

A battery is a battery. An electric motor is an electric motor. Is there anyone who gets excited about batteries or motors? More to the point, is there any difference between one brand of battery (or motor) and another? Maybe price. When you’re at the supermarket and need some AAA batteries, you might be swayed to buy Duracell rather than EverReady, depending on the price of each. You might also choose one over the other based on what you’ve heard (or experienced) about the relative longevity of one battery vs. another.

The same considerations apply with regard to EV batteries – and motors.

Fahrvergnügen doesn’t enter into it.

How could it?

Having personally driven dozens of different make/model EVs, I can attest from experience that they are all pretty much the same and not much fun – because they are one-dimensional devices. They accelerate authoritatively; much more so than most gas-engined cars. But what else? there’s not much fahrvergnügen to it because basically you just sit there and push down on a pedal that doesn’t even have the emotionally satisfying appeal of a gas pedal that’s connected to a throttle – that you can feel. Rather, that doesn’t feel like the pedal of a car-driving game on your XBox or Nintendo.

VW says – according to Ward’s Automotive – that the battery powered GTI has a “driving mode developed specifically for Volkswagen’s latest electric model (that) alters throttle response, steering weighting and suspension settings while simultaneously switching the cockpit graphics and ambient lighting to a red display theme.” 

Xbox or Nintendo, again.

There is no throttle in a battery-powered vehicle. So VW simulates the “response” of one. It is of a piece with the fake engine sounds emanating from other battery powered vehicles, such as the Dodge Charger and the simulated “shifting” from a transmission that isn’t there, as in Hyundai battery-powered vehicles.

Perhaps the most galling part is this thing isn’t even economical – or affordable. Or practical. A 1985 GTI was all of those things. Its gas tank held about 14 gallons of gas, which gave it a driving range of about 420 miles. More than 40 years later, the battery-powered GTI might go 263 miles on a full charge, VW says. There’s not a lot of fahrvergnügen when you’re not fahring (going somewhere). The ’85 GTI listed for about $9,300 when it was new. That’s about $29k today – which is a lot more in both inflated and real-world terms (i.e., it’s not just that things cost more dollars but that most of us have fewer dollars to buy them with) but still well shy of the $45k VW is asking for the battery powered GTI.

There’s not much fahrvergnügen if you can’t afford any.

At least we knew this was coming, well in advance. VW stopped offering a manual transmission in the gas-engined GTI after the end of the 2024 model year. This took away a lot of the fahrvergnügen. An automatic-only GTI  being something just shy of a battery-powered GTI. The removal of the manual after 2024 can be seen as anticipatory. In the get-used-to-it sense.

There is some goods news. VW will still be selling a GTI with an engine (but not with a manual transmission) in the United States for a little while longer. The battery-powered doppelgänger will be sold in Europe at first. But the plan is made clear. And there’s not much fahrvergnügen in it.

Maybe not much VW after awhile, either.

Because why bother? A device is just another device, after all.

. . .

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