It's a perfectly horrible day in Toronto. The highway has all sorts of weird white cars, like a Ford Escape, a Nissan Leaf, and the BMW 3 Series GT. The only guy with a bright red car is behind the wheel of a Golf GTI.
He must be passionate about driving, which makes him very good at it. Right? Wrong. Life might be too short to drive boring cars and all that, but buying a hot hatch doesn't automatically make you the best wheelman on the road.
Take the Golf GTI driver, who can't make up his mind about what lane he wants to use. I often like to imagine what I would do if I were behind the wheel in the crash video. If it's Russian, the answer is usually "buy a shotgun" or "stay home."
Oh look, there's that supposedly German hot hatch that's made in Mexico. You can tell because it has the wrong kind of taillights. Also, they just launched a new model in Europe with a lot more power. It's a real bummer to live in Canada, I would say. Still, I wouldn't mind the opportunity of GTI ownership.
But the question is: could I avoid the crash? Probably not because there's not enough time. That concrete barrier to the left looks all kinds of scary. The least I could do is slam the brakes a little sooner... maybe.
Is this a lapse in judgment on the part of the GTI driver? I don't think so. He clearly sees the car he struck but thought he had enough time to get in front of it, which still implies that he intended to cut someone off.
And it's not like the "hot" part of the hatch posed any problems. The GTI is as easy to drive as a regular Golf, with excellent all-around visibility. Didn't they offer a safety pack with blind spot monitoring? So I guess the only unanswered question is why there's Chinese radio in Toronto.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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