When a car is regarded as the greatest hot hatch of all time, it must be a strong contender for the greatest car ever.

When it was launched, the Mk1 Golf GTi blew everyone away with its blend of pace and handling. And Stuart Milne says it's still just as enchanting today.

Back in the mid 1970s, if you wanted a sports car, you bought a leaky old MG. If you wanted practicality, it was an Austin Allegro for you.

So when Volkswagen waded into battle with a brilliant, fast and practical version of the already popular Golf, petrolheads were just stunned.

The Golf GTi wasn't just Volkswagen's first hot hatch, but the first proper hot hatch anywhere.

Sure, Alfa Romeo's Alfasud was the first practical hatchback to be a hoot to drive, but its was slow and suffered the same reliability foibles as most 1970s Italian cars. Consequently, it never sold in massive numbers in the UK.

The Golf, on the other hand was a smash hit for Volkswagen, and they never looked back.

Drive one and you'll see why. It still looks great after all these years, and its feather light physic means it can still out-handle most of today's so-called hot hatches.

History has turned over only a handful of cars that could hold a torch to the mighty VeeDub.

Like many performance cars of the era, it only came about because of a bunch of enthusiasts working away in obscure workshops, looking to build something that satisfied their performance needs.

It was unveiled to the world at the 1975 Frankfurt Motor Show, but it took another four years before the first right hand drive cars arrived on these shores.

Really early UK cars came with an 110bhp, 1.6-litre engine coupled to a four-speed gearbox. A year later, the five-speed 'box came and knocked the 0-60mph down from 9.1 to 8.5 seconds and boosted the top speed to 113mph.

In 1982, when Musical Youth were topping the charts with Pass the Dutchie, Volkswagen bored out the 1.6 engine to 1.8-litres, and things started to get even more interesting.

Once again, its light weight made the most of the extra 2bhp, and the 0-60mph dash was cut to 8.2 seconds - imagine that performance from a 112bhp car today.

A mild facelift was the only way to tell them apart and the interior received the wiper-stalk operated MFA on-board computer, which still remains today.

In 1984, it was replaced by the equally capable, but slightly less iconic Mk2, which found favour with the 1980's filofax brigade and became a legend in its own right.

Unfortunately, as far as enthusiasts were concerned, the GTi lost its edge after the Mk2, with a series of slow, lardy cars that used the GTi badge as a marketing tool, rather than to distinguish its white-hot models.

So what does this mean for Golf enthusiasts? Numbers of good Mk1s are in freefall, as they succumb to rust and unsympathetic owners, so you'll have to pay handsomely for a good one.

Autocar magazine summed up the greatness of the Mk1 perfectly: "it says something about the essential rightness of the original Golf GTI that only now has Volkswagen managed to make a better one, and it need twice the power to do it."

It took them two decades too.