This is one of the more socially acceptable things we immediately think of when we first hear the term ‘hot hatch.’
The cheeky cherub from Van Halen’s 1984: Clearly he had hot hatch on the brain.
Though out of context it sounds vulgar, the term ‘Hot Hatch’ originated as an informal automotive industry term. It’s derived from referring to an attractive, practically-minded people-mover as a hot hatchback. Initially coined by the European motoring press, a hot hatch is a high-performance derivative of a car body style consisting of a three- or five-door hatchback cars.
How did Van Halen not think of it?
Like a lot of great things that are still with us today, it came from the 80s. In fact, the term gained widespread use during the Reagan era in the United Kingdom, first as ‘hot hatchback’ by 1983 and then shortened to ‘hot hatch’ in the motoring press in 1984. ‘Hot hatch’ is now commonly and widely accepted as a mainstream, if still informal term. It is retrospectively applied to cars from the late 1970s but was not a phrase used at the time.
The quintessential hot hatch is the Volkswagen GTI, the performance edition of the Golf. Since 1983, it has pretty much remained the segment leader until recently, when the Ford Focus ST unseated it in all out performance and fuel efficiency. Expect a full-force retaliation from the Germans in their quest for automotive global domination. Though the Pontiac Vibe and Toyota Matrix had a go of it, the Mazda Speed 3 was the GTI’s only real competition for the past decade. Two marques entered the segment sort of surreptitiously, making this a true segment within the automotive industry. Mini Cooper snuck in on mere cuteness and alleged allegiance to its earlier heritage, while Subaru took their legendary Impreza WRX STi sedan and gave it 5 doors. One is a classed-up clown car with cornering ability and the other a boy racer doing family duty, and we love them both for being so unique. If our bank account were big enough, these four would be in our garage—next to our Pontiac Vibe GT and Toyota Matrix XRS.
