They may give other drivers a touch of the heebie-jeebies when the piercing bluish-white lights appear in their rear-view mirrors, and you do get oncoming traffic occasionally thinking that dipped beam alone can't possibly be that bright and consequently giving you a dose of full beam, but nonetheless, the Golf's xenons are brilliant.

You may have spotted OY55 GOX in our fuel test just before Christmas (087). The test essentially meant completing a lot of miles simply running fuel through the system as fast as possible, so instead of battling with traffic I decided to use the fact that you can now buy petrol pretty much 24-7 to put in some serious night-time mileage.

The 2am countryside around Northampton was treated to the Golf's full-daylight effect. Birds stopped roosting, flowers were momentarily tricked into bloom and rabbits weren't so much caught in the headlights as stunned into believing a full-on heavenly host must be approaching via the power of four cylinders and a turbo.

At £725 the xenons are certainly not cheap, but they can produce up to 200 per cent more light, use 25 per cent less power, and last up to three times as long. Perhaps more importantly, a driver's eyes tire far less quickly than with the standard halogen lamps' more orangey glow, meaning you're less likely to be rubbing your eyeballs raw and longing for a couple of matchsticks to prop open your eyelids. Mind you, when your headlamps are so good that you can drive like you're on a night stage of the Monte, adrenalin tends to do quite a good job of keeping you awake anyway...