By: IOL Motoring Staff
Maria Worth, Austria - Each year the apprentices at Volkswagen's Wolfsburg headquarters get to build a totally outrageous custom Golf to show off at the annual Worthersee rally for GTI fans.
And this year, of course, it had to be really special because 2016 marks the 40th anniversary of the original Golf GTI. It took a team of seven men and nine women almost nine be months to create the hand-built Golf GTI 'Heartbeat' show car, based on a two-door Golf GTI Performance model, and here's why:
To start with, the standard two-litre TSI turbopetrol four has been uprated to full (295kW) track specification, and it runs wide semi-slick rubber on specially-painted 20 inch BBS rims over race-spec lowered suspension.
The car is finished in reflex silver metallic paint, with the roof and front end wrapped in contrasting dark grey foil. It has GTI honeycombs in bright red and two shades of grey on the bonnet, roof and wings, marking the border between paint and wrap, underlined by a carbon-fibre aero kit finished in high-gloss clear-coat.
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But it's inside where the trainees really went to town; given that they are all under 27 years old, the audio system was of prime importance, so the show car has no rear seats and the entire area behind the front seats is taken up by a 1360 watt, seven speaker set-up with LED lighting and engraved glass covers.
The special sports seats were borrowed from the Clubsport S program and retrimmed with honeycomb perforation with red background in the backrests and a pale grey '40' emblem on each head restraint.
There's more honeycomb mesh with red background on the door panels, and heartbeat symbols on the strips above the door trims, and below the glove compartment.
If this show car is anything to go by, the future of the Volkswagen GTI brand is in safe hands.