- VW dusts off the W12 Golf to celebrate 50 years of the GTI.
- The ultimate Golf had a mid-mounted W12 engine sending 641 hp to the rear wheels.
- The Golf GTI W12-650 took the rear axle from a Lamborghini Gallardo.
Happy birthday to the Golf GTI! The Grand Tourer Injection turns 50 this year, and Volkswagen wants you to believe the limited-run Edition 50 is the ultimate GTI. Well, it is, provided you’re only considering street-legal models. Back in 2007, Wolfsburg built a crazy one-off that a production Golf will never match, be it a GTI or even an R. The W12-650 is a hybrid, but not in the traditional sense.
To celebrate the GTI’s milestone, VW is bringing back the wildest Golf it has ever built. Now finished in Tornado Red instead of white, the concept features a twin-turbo W12 engine borrowed from a Bentley Continental GT. Mounted behind the seats, the 6.0-liter monster sends 640 horsepower to the rear wheels through a six-speed automatic transmission sourced from the ill-fated Phaeton.
The “hybrid” bits didn’t stop there, as the Golf GTI W12-650 was a true parts-bin extraordinaire, using the front brakes from an Audi RS4. It also borrowed the rear axle and brakes from a full-fledged supercar, the Lamborghini Gallardo. To cram in all these components from other VW Group cars, engineers widened the Mk5’s three-door body by 6.3 inches (160 millimeters).
That pair of narrow-angle V6 engines merged to create a mid-mounted W12, which helped the bonkers Golf GTI sprint to 62 mph (100 km/h) in 3.7 seconds. Even 19 years later, it’s still nearly a second quicker than the current-generation R with its all-wheel-drive system. Flat out, the unobtanium Golf was said to reach 325 km/h (201.8 mph), although that figure was never officially tested.
The unique Golf stood out for other reasons, too. It featured a carbon-fiber roof with an integrated cooling scoop to feed air to the rear radiators. VW installed a quad exhaust setup typically reserved for the flagship R, while the side-mounted cooling vents never made it to a production car. Even the C-pillar was reshaped to channel more air toward the twelve-cylinder powerhouse.
Although the 19-inch wheels had a familiar design, the GTI that never was wore wide 295-section tires to better harness its output. Even so, it must have been nerve-wracking to drive a Golf sending 553 pound-feet (750 Newton-meters) of torque exclusively to the rear wheels. The GTI W12-650 is likely the most temperamental hot hatch ever conceived.
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Source: Volkswagen
Motor1’s Take: Overkill? Yes. Excessive? Absolutely. Should VW have built it? Probably not. The car is notoriously difficult to drive, and there likely wouldn’t have been a market for a W12-engined hatchback anyway. The GTI W12-650 would’ve carried an astronomical price tag. Then again, Renault had no trouble selling the 5 Turbo 3E for €160,000 (nearly $190,000).
This delightfully absurd Golf is another example of Ferdinand Piech’s relentless desire to push the envelope and build the unthinkable: a rear-wheel-drive Golf with twelve cylinders. The W12-650 hails from a time when nothing seemed to stop the VW Group from pursuing spectacular projects, culminating in the mighty Bugatti Veyron. There were a few sales flops along the way, including the Phaeton and A2, but the late VW Group supremo remains one of the most influential figures in automotive history.
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