I agree with you Adrian that an excessively slow car tends to be most unnerving and pretty dangerous when it cannot accelerate rapidly or get to a decent speed easily especially on a motorway.
However, making a car noisier with an overpriced exhaust and air intake and harder riding with madly expensive suspension components is also a pretty stupid exercise especially when the car is primarily used as a daily commuting and family hauling tool.
Both the Golf GTI and GTD in standard form are pretty rapid cars and more than effectively fulfil their real world purpose. Re-mapping an engine is as far as I would venture and this is also a matter of contention in my opinion.
I, therefore, strongly feel that the standard GTI and GTD are as perfect a compromise (a contradiction in terms) as one can get with their decent room, practical external dimensions and excellent performance. A few tenths of a second improvement in acceleration serves me with no useful purpose in London traffic. It might possibly be a hindrance for issues of warranty, reliability and fuel economy.
It is interesting to see the larger and more powerful cars gingerly trying to negotiate London traffic and are left fumbling away miles behind my GTI.
To many it feels good to go mad sometimes (in the nicest possible way) with these major revisions. There is nothing amiss with personalisation but at times it can, IMO, be taken to excess.
However, ETTO and good luck.
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