HAVE A VOLKSWAGEN GTI FIRST DATE THIS VALENTINE’S WEEKEND

• Motorists encouraged to find true GTI love this Valentine’s weekend
• Campaign is part of GTI 50^th anniversary celebrations

Milton Keynes – Love is in the air this weekend, so Volkswagen is inviting people to take a GTI car for a ‘first date’ and celebrate 50 years of an icon.

A fun social media campaign from Volkswagen is spreading some GTI love ahead of Valentine’s Day on Saturday 14 February. The idea is that a test drive is a little like a first date – it’s all about discovering chemistry, feeling the spark and finding out if it could be the start of something special.

“People talk about love at first sight – but with a GTI it’s really love at first drive,” said James Thorpe, Social Media Manager at Volkswagen UK. “From the moment you first sit on those famous tartan seats and you press the start button, the GTI knows how to get your heart aflutter. Valentine’s Day felt like the perfect moment to celebrate that instant connection.”

Anyone hoping to fall head over heels for a GTI can contact their local Volkswagen Retailer, or they can request a test drive on the Volkswagen.co.uk website.

Golf GTI and Polo GTI test drives are subject to availability at participating Volkswagen Retailers.

Look out for social media posts from Volkswagen on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn.

Celebrating 50 years of GTI
The opening chapter of the Volkswagen GTI story actually began in the summer of 1975, at the Nürburgring in Germany. A prototype was used as a pace car at a race event, and spectators wondered why this Volkswagen was driving so incredibly fast. The name Golf was written on the doors, but the name GTI was still a secret.

A few weeks later, Volkswagen revealed that secret and presented it at the Frankfurt International Motor Show: a family-sized hatchback capable of 113 mph.

Demand was enormous. By June 1976, the 110 PS Golf GTI was launched in Germany at a price of 13,850 Deutschmarks. Though just 5,000 vehicles were planned initially, in the end a total of 461,700 first-generation Golf GTI models were sold.

That early GTI love has continued for half a century, resulting in more than 2.5 million Golf GTI sales to date globally across eight generations, not to mention several other GTI versions of popular Volkswagen models including the Scirocco, Lupo, up!, Polo and even the Passat.

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About the Volkswagen brand:
A total of 178,607 new Volkswagen passenger vehicles were registered in the UK in 2025, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). This equated to a market share of 8.84 per cent – ahead of the brand’s market share in 2024 (8.52 per cent) – and made Volkswagen the UK’s best-selling new-car brand for the fifth year running.

The Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand has a global presence, producing vehicles at 28 locations in 12 countries, and employs 170,000 people. In 2025, Volkswagen delivered around 4.73 million vehicles worldwide. These included bestsellers such as the Polo, T-Roc, T-Cross, Golf, Tiguan and Passat, as well as the successful all-electric ID. models. Volkswagen handed over about 382,000 all-electric vehicles to customers worldwide in 2025 and, with its ACCELERATE strategy, is consistently advancing its ambition to become the most desirable brand for sustainable mobility.

www.vwpress.co.uk 

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