2003 Volkswagen Golf GTi TDI PD 150BHP review from UK and Ireland

Nothing has gone wrong, however as I have only had it a couple of weeks I wouldn't have expected anything yet.

The car was a 'distress purchase' as our 10 yr old Polo was viciously attacked by another car coming out from a side road and written off.

The Golf is a great car to drive, the diesel provides fantastic mid range acceleration in all gears, although with the small rev band of the diesel it does mean a lot of speedy gear changing to get the best from it. There is a lot of luggage space with the rear seats folded down and a small lip means that you can get bags of cement into the back fairly easily. We are hoping that it will also prove to be an able tow car, although the low ground clearance may prove to be a bit of a problem.

The controls for the heating/cooling are extremely difficult to find and operate. They are about 6mm square push buttons located in a row at the bottom of the central console and require you to take your eyes off the road for 15 seconds or so to find the required control. They need to have tactile markings on them, ideally the whole unit needs to be repositioned to the top of the console.

The lights are like glow worm's arm pits compared with those on a mark 2 Golf GTi and are really disappointing for such a performance car, auxiliary spot lights are a necessity here.

The warning hooters and buzzers on the console are irritating and give the feeling that we are being treated as incompetent and are unaware of our driving operations.

The electronic diff lock seems to work quite well, although it is interesting that the works rally golfs have a mechanical LSD fitted so there must be downsides to it.

The ECU doesn't allow you to have the brake and accelerator pressed at the same time. If you do that the engine shuts down to an idle, which is potentially dangerous. It doesn't enable you to dry the brakes out after having gone through a ford or deep water and you can forget left foot braking.