► First pictures of VW Golf GTE Sport
► A madcap 395bhp Worthersee concept
► Carbon body, plug-in hybrid tech
It’s all go for the Volkswagen Golf at this year’s Worthersee tuning festival: Wolfsburg is preparing a trio of hot hatches to wow the go-faster brigade – including this wild Golf GTE Sport.
It’s a concept car, as you might judge from the bespoke carbonfibre bodywork shrouding the 400 horsepower innards.
That’s a metric 400 ponies, equivalent to 395 imperial horses in bhp, achieved through some plug-in hybrid mechanicals.
VW Golf GTE Sport: a very radical kind of Golf GTI
Around 200,000 visitors to Worthersee this weekend will ogle the new GTE Sport, a radical futuristic vision for hot hatches of the future; it’ll sit alongside the production-bound GTI Clubsport, a 261bhp special due for the Golf GTI’s 40th in 2016, and the mainly cosmetic apprentice special Golf.
The GTE Sport has what VW calls an ‘electric propshaft,’ as the hybrid system powers the rear axle. Performance is predictably rapid: 0-62mph takes 4.3sec and top speed is claimed at 174mph.
Yet this vision for future performance hatchbacks also has a green edge; it can run 30 miles on silent e-power. Enough for a few laps of the Nurburgring in stealth mode then. Though presumably not at full pelt…
Click here to read about the VW Golf R420 which is bound for production in 2016.