Volkswagen Builds a Monster 503 Horsepower Design Vision GTI

Design Vision GTI_1Volkswagen’s 503 Horsepower GTI isn’t merely a stack of chalk drawings — an actual concept car has been made for the annual Wörthersee festival in Reifnitz, Austria. In typical Volkswagen understated fashion, too, the 3.0-liter V-6 monster car is merely called the Design Vision GTI. Uh-huh. No Mercedes “Black Edition,” no V- or M-edition label. And, sadly, that’s a sure sign there’s no production GTI like this about to debut. Ever.

But as an exercise it’s still…bad ass!

We wanted to know more and got at least a few comments from Mark Gillies, VW Manager of Product and Technology. He cautioned that he couldn’t make remarks on every line of questioning we had but his insight was still helpful.

First, the car sits on 20-inch wheels shod with 235 front, 275 rear tires. It rides 2.2 inches lower, at 54.5 inches, and it’s 2.8 inches wider (73.6 inches). Yes, that means the entire body has been altered, with wider sills and wider C-pillars. Gillies, unfortunately, wasn’t able to offer further insight on the car’s suspension setup.

Design Vision GTI_3-4

But we do learn more about the engine.

Yep, it’s the Audi S4’s 3.0-liter TSI V-6, and as for why it gets twin turbochargers rather than a blower, a la the S4 (which makes 333 hp), Gillies explains that dual turbochargers make the most sense to get this kind of output reliably. It’s worth noting that while there’s no intended production for this car if you are thinking about reliability goals as well as fuel consumption, turbos are the way to go; supercharging has a constant drag effect that erodes fuel economy.

And why would you care about such matters if a car is just a design exercise? Racing.

“As for the racing side of it,” Gillies says, “The cars we ran at the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring were pretty extreme, so it’s always a possibility.”

That’s also why you’d want to ensure that the car can handle 503hp at 6500 rpm, and why you’d want it tuned to develop a great deal of low-end grunt: 369 pound-feet of torque right off the bat, at 2000 rpm, and 413 lb-ft at 4000 rpm. Again, in terms of racing and efficiency, these traits would be very desirable. As would the car’s 0-60 time of 3.9 seconds and 186 top speed.

Design Vision GTI_cockpit

Gillies says he’d assume these numbers were strictly based on tables (gear ratios, weights, output let you do this math fairly easily), but he couldn’t confirm the facts either way.

The Design Vision car has both a DSG, dual-clutch transmission and as you’d expect to prevent frying the front rubber, AWD. Again, it’s not clear where the DSG tranny is borrowed from, since these torque figures would crush the gearbox of even the R-edition Golf, nor is it spelled out whether VW’s Haldex-supplied 4Motion AWD is put to use here or if they’re borrowing from the quattro racing transmission bin.
Design Vision GTI_rear

One thing Gillies did say is that the “Lamborghini Gallardo has optional front carbon-ceramic brakes that are 15 inches in diameter,” and since that’s the spec on the Design Vision GTI and the VW Group owns Lamborghini… You get the picture.

And even if all this engineering is only as a study, or for racing only, we’d love to see the optional stripped down interior. All the switches have been ruggedized, there are fewer of them, and the entire dash is more driver oriented. And since GoPros are everywhere now, VW went ahead and incorporated a camera in the car’s A-pillar; it can either monitor the road or the interior of the car. But hopefully there’s a kill switch for that.

Check out this Volkswagen GTI versus Golf R comparo: