Watch: Can the Up! GTI Become Top Gear’s Performance Car of the Year?

Top Gear is getting ready to declare a Performance Car of the Year, but before it can do that it needs to thoroughly examine the cars on offer. Among the supercars and the hypercars, there’s one contender that you’d struggle to even call a sports car: the Up! GTI.

Yes, the Up! GTI with its 100-ish hp and 8.8 seconds-to-60 acceleration figures seems like it’s outclassed in the field. But like golf, performance isn’t always about the biggest numbers.

Unlike the competition, which is actively involved in the conspiracy to end your life with high speeds and Gs, the Up! is a friendlier kind of performance car. Tipping the scales at less than 1,000 kg (just a shade under 2,200 lbs), the Up! has nearly the same power to weight ratio as the original Golf GTI. That makes it one of the only performance cars on this list whose performance can be achieved.

As Top Gear puts it, “This car is all about tactility, it’s about agility, it’s about involvement. It’s not really about going as fast as possible.”

With tiny little wheels, placed all the way out at the corners, it’s more like a go-kart than any of the race-car-wannabes that it’s competing against. And though we all dream of a race car, nothing’s more fun than karting.

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Waterfest Moves to Atco Dragway

Waterfest 24 will be held at Atco Dragway, in Atco, New Jersey. The summer event will take place at its new venue on July 21 and 22. Long held in Englishtown, New Jersey, the festival has been such a large part of the VW scene that the latest iteration of the Golf even comes with optional “Englishtown” wheels . The new venue, however, is an NHRA drag track a scant 52 miles southwest of Englishtown. The ¼ mile drag track opened in 1960, which makes it the oldest drag strip in New Jersey. The announcement came today on a social media post that announced the new location. Waterfest is North America’s largest VW/Audi show. As many 20,000 people show up for the annual show, making the second largest show in the world—with Worthersee being number one. 2018 will be Waterfest’s 24 th year in existence. The post Waterfest Moves to Atco Dragway appeared first on VWVortex . from VWVortex http://ift.tt/2GQjkuc via IFTTT

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