Green’s Dictionary of Slang

joy-riding, or, in legal parlance, taking and driving away; the ‘hotter’ steals a high-performance car and, often to an appreciative crowd, puts it and his own driving skills through their paces, emphasizing skids, spins and hand-brake turns.

1991		Hansard (UK) 9 Dec. n.p.: During September, the people of our nation sat watching a unique spectacle on their television sets. They watched as young people drove stolen cars at high speed on several estates, to the great danger of residents. ‘Hotting’ was the term used by many of those youngsters to describe their activity.
1998		N. Groombridge ‘The Car and Crime’ doctoral thesis 🌐 A distinction is made between joyriding and performance driving – ‘hotting’ to the media, ‘frisking’ in the North East – noting that performance driving was more an activity of the young not the ‘specialist’.
2000		Terra Firm issue 8 🌐 ‘Hotting’ involves stealing a car and performing high speed stunts in front of an audience. [...] the police may be encouraged to give chase. After the entertainment the car is dumped, sometimes smashed up, and perhaps even torched.