But in the real world, where you can only enjoy the speed a few seconds at a time, practicality and comfort are two giant considerations in everyday life: commuting to work in the morning, loading up with groceries, strapping the kids in for after-school activities, rushing to the airport in the snow, finding a parking spot in a crowded mall parking lot, taking an onramp at slightly more than the posted limit… These are the things for which the GTI is the near perfect balance of size, layout and fun.

The heart of the fun is the GTI’s 2.0L turbo engine. The turbo makes for some heady torque even in casual use, 258 lb-ft of torque as low as 1,600 rpm, so you can either accelerate along with the flow of traffic effortlessly, or tap the shifter back to put the transmission into Sport mode and it holds gears until you are into the peak power, 210 hp from 4,300 to 6,200 rpm. In fact, it might be a little overeager, but S means Sport in this transmission, so if you reached cruising speed you’ll want to give it another tap to get back into standard Drive mode so you aren’t cruising along on the highway at 4,000 rpm for no good reason. Sport and Drive should also tip you off that this GTI was equipped with the quick-shifting dual-clutch automatic DSG that has been the class-leading automatic for years now. With such quick shifts, the paddle shifters that are at your fingertips often beckon for a quick geardown rather than the switch to S mode, dropping a gear or two for a brief stretch and then reverting back to Drive. You can also lock in manual mode if you’re feeling particularly dedicated to deciding on appropriate ratios for every situation.

As we discovered in our Everyday Fun Car Comparison, the GTI’s ride is refined and comfortable, in another league compared to other sport compacts, but would its mild manners begin to disappoint when we went searching for greater and greater speeds as the weather cleared up? Not in my book. In fact, I’d like nothing more than to put the GTI to the ultimate performance test on a track and see if I could eke out unexpected speed from a car that seem more commuter than track weapon.

Still, on the road, the steering is sharp and precise, the chassis light but undeniably solid, contributing to that refined, quiet ride while still delivering nimble moves in tight quarters and a buttoned-down highway cruising demeanour.