For the record, Willfinch used to own a Fiesta Zetec-S and used to be one of these hothatch fanboys Matt speaks of.
His Fiesta was the fastest thing on the roads when he owned it, much like his semi-supercar MR2. Anyway, I love understated hot hatch motors.
My old 106 GTi used to run 155bhp and weighed just shy of 900kgs. It was a superb trackcar. It was nippy to 100, but as Matt has pointed out, it used to run out of puff after about 90ish. I say nippy because it still used to get mullered on the straights by the turbo boys. The corners however were a completely different story. I then had my Starlet Glanza.
It was running about 210bhp with matching torque and weighed about 900kgs. That was fast for a hot hatch. It was about on similar pace to your run of the mill impreza's. It would match my Standard Rev3 tubby from a rolling start, say 20-90. Again though, after 100 it would run out of puff due to it only being a 1.3. As they saying goes, there's no replacement for displacement
