I wasnt around in 1976 ... my brother was born then tho LOL
and if u read the what happened in the early 90's u'll read summet along the lines of
"with insurance premiums on hot hatches going thru the roof and the sales of hot hatches dropping, something need to be done, and this was VW's answer, to produce a same powered car as the previous mark but add more equipment, making it heavier and therefore slightly slower, but also reducing premiums because of airbags, immobilisers etc. ... the "hot hatch" days have now died off .. with the likes of the mk2 16v golf and XR2"
summet like that ... its not 1986 anymore.