The yearly Wörthersee show on the shores of Lake Wörthersee in Austria attracts some 150,000 VAG fans, and in recent years the boffins at various VAG design and engineering studios have built something special just for the Wörthersee punters – each year outdoing each other and themselves to build the wildest VAG product-based concepts. They’re mostly motorsport-inspired, like the insane Design Vision GTI we see here, but unlike anything before it, this new Golf GTI concept is so extreme that it surely snowboards everyday – of piste, of course – says ‘dude’ all the time, and pours Red Bull on its cornflakes!

However, mad as it may look, the read-deal car that hits the Wörthersee show floor today promises real-deal motorsport engineering under that bonkers bodywork. And it’s a tech-spec treat allround, alright.

Firstly, we have the lower, wider and longer body. The ‘Design Vision GTI’ is based on the current VW Golf GTI – that’s just gone into UK dealers, by the way – but this one’s gone super-wide and super-low. Most notable points of extreme attraction are the C-pillars that now flare out to meet the wide rear arches and the rear bumper; the chopped roof; the deepest of air venting allround, and the 20-inch bespoke alloys over big ceramic brake discs. The extra wide new track figures are 1,595mm at the front and 1,579mm at the rear, ensuring supremely flat circuit cornering via the fitment of four big, fat slick tyres.

All of this awesome aero and aggressive engineering would be for nowt if there wasn’t some big bhp in town to attack the laps, and the Design Vision GTI does not disappoint here either. A 3-litre, V6 turbocharged petrol motor does the business to the tune of 500bhp and 560Nm of torque; the kind of figures that’d boot a BTCC racecar right into touch and have a full-spec German DTM racer wisely considering an early bath.

Power is pounded to all four wheels via a double-clutch gearbox and while a top speed hasn’t been officially specified – likely to be nearly 200mph – the to-62mph sprint is dealt with in a devilish 3.9 seconds. Tin-top motorsport just went mental!

The trick body and undercarriage is matched by a stripped and rebuilt interior boasting plenty of carbon and Alcantara, as well as a full-size display – next to the main clocks binnacle – that shows a graphic of the racetrack the car is currently slaying, as well as the lap times logged so far. You can also log onto Facebook from inside the Design Vision GTI, but doing that when you’ve 500-turbo-horsepower to play with is like turning up to a stag do with a can of shandy!

By Daniel Anslow

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