From May 8th through the 11th, 150,000 passionate fans turn the Austrian city of Reifnitz into a veritable Mecca for the Volkswagen GTI. One of the traditional highlights at the Wörthersee festival is a concept car that’s conceived especially for the meeting by Volkswagen engineers and designers. This year, the concept is a race car-the "Design Vision GTI".
The striking "Design Vision GTI" is based on the seventh-generation GTI. The design team, led by Klaus Bischoff (Head of Design of Volkswagen Brand), has drawn the C-pillars and sills outward as autonomous body elements, thus creating space for substantially wider front and rear tracks, as well as specially developed 20-inch wheels (with 235 tires in the front and 275s at the rear). The "Design Vision GTI" can reach a top speed of 186 mph and looks as if it could start racing tomorrow.
Although the new GTI has plenty of power in standard form, with up to 230 hp available on the Performance model, the "Design Vision GTI" ups the ante with 503 hp, developed at 6500 rpm. Just like the engine in the regular GTI, the concept car has a turbocharged and direct-injection TSI engine-in this case, a 3.0-liter V6 instead of a 2.0-liter four cylinder, using twin turbochargers.
Two three-way catalytic converters are arranged close to the engine to optimize emissions behavior. The V6 TSI develops 369 pound-feet of torque from as low as 2000 rpm, with a maximum figure of 413 lb-ft at 4000 rpm.
All this power and torque is distributed to the wheels via a DSG dual-clutch automatic transmission and an all-wheel-drive system. With this powertrain and a specially tuned chassis, the "Design Vision GTI" eats any type of racetrack. On a dragstrip, it will reach 62 mph from a standstill in an impressive 3.9 seconds.
In order to slow this super-powerful GTI, Volkswagen fitted it with large carbon-ceramic brake discs, sized 15.0 inches up front and 14.0 inches at the back. The ceramic brake discs and red-painted brake calipers peek through the spokes of the 20-inch alloy wheels, which are 8.5J wide at the front and 9.5J at the back.
