Hot Hatches

      The term "hot hatch" is a relatively new term to the world of cars.  With the ever-changing and evolving car design market, new configurations are constantly being created.  Hot hatches in my opinion are a cross between sports cars and SUV's. They are striving to be practical, but still try to maintain a certain level of sportiness to them.  It is a delicate balance that when it is not achieved, leads to imbalances in the performance.  One of the first cars created in this class was the Subaru WRX.  Since it first came out, it has set the precedent and established a large following among rally cross enthusiasts.  Other companies to begin the category and those who helped to grow the category to what it is today include Audi, Mini, Fiat, Ford, Volkswagen and many other companies.  Therr are also companies not found domestically like Peugeot and Citroen who may not sell cars in the U.S., but they still have a driving force and impact in how cars sold here are produced and developed.

     What separates these cars from others is the offered capabilities.  On any model in the class you can expect a few things to be near the same thing.  First is the small, power dense engine.  Don't let the small displacement fool you however, these engine can pack a mean punch.  Another thing you can expect to find is a suspension set up to be stiffer than in other cars to handle off road courses that these cars are expected to handle.  My favorite feature for these cars however, would be the fact that most of these cars come with an optional manual transmission!  Now that is how you make a car.

      What the objective of these cars is, is that they want to provide ample amenities for the driver to make it appealing as a daily driver.  At the same time they must be built to handle drivers taking their rides out to off road rally schools like Dirt Fish rally school to thrash them.  This creates a very fast, very livable and very fun car to own. With more and more car companies hopping on the Hot Hatch train, expect to see new innovations being created to push not only the product to a whole new level, but to push the envelope in the racing scene as well.