Very few one-offs are designed to be driven, but that’s not the way Volkswagen played things with the Golf GTI W12 concept. It looks like pure show candy: a 642-hp, mid-mounted W12 engine under cartoonish stretched bodywork. Yet not only is it a driver, complete with a 202-mph top speed, but the company let us put it through its paces at Gros Dölln in Germany, a former Soviet airbase.
The GTI W12 was commissioned to wow the crowds at this year’s Worthersee GTI festival in Austria, but designer Marc Lichte was told that it also must be a full runner. Therefore, it was built to standards far closer to a prototype, and Lichte had the chance to rummage through the more exotic reaches of the corporate parts bin.
It’s got Audi RS4 front brakes, a Lamborghini Gallardo back axle, a VW Phaeton six-speed automatic gearbox and a twin-turbocharged, 6.0-liter W12 engine from the Bentley Continental sitting where you’d expect to find the groceries in a standard GTI. Vast sill extensions add six inches of width, while mammoth air intakes (including scoops integrated into the roof and rear side windows) feed air to the mid-mounted motor.
And it drives almost as nicely as it looks. With drive to the rear wheels only, VW decided to limit the engine’s torque output to 222 lb-ft in first gear and 331 lb-ft in second. But from third gear upward, the full 553 lb-ft is available. The official 3.7-second 0-to-62-mph time makes it quicker than a Gallardo.
It even corners pretty well, certainly considering its short wheelbase and lack of any kind of stability control. Without the weight of an engine in the front, turn-in is a fair bit blunter than with a standard GTI, but the big 295 profile tires find plenty of grip, and the cornering line can be tightened up nicely on the throttle.
Relevance? None whatsoever. You won’t be surprised to hear that VW has no plans to put a 642-hp, mid-engined, rear-drive Golf into production. And it won’t be a U.S.-market Rabbit, either. That’s not going to stop us from thinking the world would be a more entertaining place with cars like this in it.
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