Outrageously entertaining 500bhp, four-wheel-drive show car offers some pointers to the future for VW's iconic Golf GTI
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.
What is it like?
Volkswagen stresses that the Design Vision GTI is a show car and hasn’t been tuned for dynamic perfection. Nevertheless our short test on a temporary course in Los Angeles offered hints as to how grin-inducing this vehicle could be if it were ever developed into a production car.
For a start, it looks stunning, taking VW’s GTI philosophy and turning all the dials up to eleven. The car’s exterior designer, Andreas Mindt, told us that the styling draws cues from several generations of Golf GTI, as well as pointing to what we can expect from future generations of the iconic hot hatch. The wider track and lower roof give it a muscular and sinister appearance.
Like a modern racing car, the Design Vision’s cabin is pared-back to the essential controls and features carbonfibre-effect finishing and Alcantara.
There’s a TFT LCD instrument display, although it wasn’t working during our drive, and a large screen on the centre console that can be configured to show a circuit map and supply lap time information. In place of regular internal door pulls there are red fabric loops, a nod to the Porsche Cup racing car.
On the other hand, conventional indicator and light stalks, an electric parking brake and climate control dials are reminders of the Design Vision GTI’s road car roots.
Behind the driver’s seat, where you’d normally find the rear seats, is a cross member, which has increased the body stiffness. There are also two black crash helmets stored behind the cross member, where the boot would be.
The steering wheel, equipped with DSG gearshift paddles, features one switch and one button. The switch toggles between three driving modes – Street, Sport and Track – which progressively stiffen the damping and beef up the engine mapping.
The other button beckons the VR6 engine into life, and it isn’t long before the Design Vision GTI’s party piece makes itself known.
It burbles along obediently until you give the throttle an inquisitive squeeze. There’s very slight pause, as if somewhere deep in the bowels of the engine a blue touch paper is being lit, before all hell breaks loose. The engine’s friendly burble turns into a cacophonous bark, and the VW rockets forward with a tremendous surge of traction.
Should I buy one?
If, by some barely credible stretch of reality, words such as ‘anaemic’ and ‘toothless’ pop into your mind when you’re flinging your still-new Golf GTI MkVII along a B-road, then you’re the sort of person who could accommodate a car like the Golf Design Vision GTI in your life.
The sticking point, of course, is that it isn’t going to reach production. The Design Vision GTI exists purely to highlight the design and performance extremes to which cars produced on the MQB platform could be stretched.
The closest we will come to buying this ‘Super GTI’ will be when some of its striking design features are incorporated into future evolutions of the Golf GTI, and when that delicious V6 engine finds its way into future VW Group vehicles.
Volkswagen Golf Design Vision GTI
Price na 0-62mph 3.9sec Top speed 186mph Economy na CO2 naKerb weight na Engine VR6, twin-turbo, petrol Power 496bhp at 6500rpm Torque 413lb ft at 4000-6000rpm Gearbox 6-spd dual clutch auto
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