It’s the most famous hot hatch and a motoring icon – and now there’s a new VW Golf GTi.

Or less of a new one, more of a radical facelift over the fifth generation Golf GT – but looking at it on the Volkswagen stage it appears to have been improved cosmetically from all angles.

There’s the Scirocco-inspired front and the Touareg-like rear light cluster which combined with the car’s beefy 18-inch alloys and stunning pearlescent paintjob makes a really good-looking car.

View images of the stunning new Volkswagen Golf GTi

It’s never been the fastest or wildest hot hatch because the selling point about the Golf GTi is its classlessness – driving one of these doesn’t always give clues to how much money there is in your bank account.

Which is why the Golf and recently-launched Scirocco may be appealing credit crunch alternatives to more expensive performance motors.

Under the bonnet of the Golf GTi will be the same 2-litre turbocharged engine as the current model but with power increased by 10bhp to 207bhp.

So performance won’t be much better than the previous model’s 146mph VMAX, with improvements instead made to the car’s on-road ability.

The next generation Golf gets new sports suspension and VW’s DCC Adaptive Chassis Control – a system which reacts to the road’s conditions and modifies the dampers to improve the ride comfort.

View images of the stunning new Volkswagen Golf GTi

On sale next summer, the new GTi will keep the seat warm at the top of the Golf range until a new four-wheel drive R32 model is announced at a later date.