What is it?
This is a Volkswagen Golf GTI like no other. Conceived by Volkswagen’s engineers and designers for the Wörthersee tuning festival held in Reifntiz, Austria in the summer, this just-for-show mega hatch packs almost 500bhp and can cover 0-62mph in a supercar-baiting 3.9secs as it sends its prodigious power to all four wheels.
Under the race-inspired Design Vision GTI’s craziness is Volkswagen Group’s clever MQB small car platform. The wheelbase remains the same as the standard Golf GTI that’s built on MQB, but the other dimensions have been tweaked.
The show car is 15mm shorter, at 4253mm, because it has a more compact rear end. The Design Vision GTI is 1385mm high, some 57mm lower than its sister, thanks to a lowered roof and suspension. It is also significantly broader at 1870mm instead of 1799mm. This has enabled the track widths to be pushed out to 1595mm (a 57mm increase) at the front and 1579mm (a 63mm increase) at the rear.
Volkswagen hasn’t revealed how much the car weighs, but it is clad mainly in plastic panels, and has the rear seats removed, a stripped-down cabin and none of the niceties like insulation and soundproofing that production cars have.
Under the bonnet, in place of the 2.0-litre turbocharged four-pot found in the conventional GTI, the Design Vision has a three-litre, twin-turbocharged VR6. The engine produces maximum power of 496bhp at 6500rpm and maximum torque of 413lb ft between 4000 and 6000rpm, distributed to the front and rear wheels via a six-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox and the Haldex-based all-wheel-drive system found in the VW Golf 4Motion.
The new powerplant is also featured in the CrossBlue Coupé SUV concept, albeit in a less outrageous state of tune, and is also reportedly planned for use in the future Passat replacement.
Join the debate
Add your comment
Why give this a star rating?
So VW can do "interesting"
Other than the black fins...