VW Woerthersee GTI Roadster Concept
From electric gaming fantasy to car show showstopper – this is the car Volkswagen should build next
By Shahzad Sheikh
This extreme machine from Volkswagen looks like it belongs in a game right? Well it did. The GTI Roadster was an electric racer for Sony Playstation 3 game Gran Turismo 6.
The rakish atmosphere-slashing sensational street-racer was designed by VW’s own three designers after they won an internal competition.
Of course they could design it any way they liked seeing as it wasn’t real and didn’t have to confirm to any requirements from accountants or safety legislation.
But if everyone thought this virtual car was gonna stay firmly in gaming space they were thankfully mistaken, because it was shown for real at the annual GTI love-fest at Woerthersee this weekend.
At 4.2m long, its 137mm shorter than a regular Golf GTI and only a fraction over one metre tall, but nearly two metres wide. And out goes the green-bean-eating electric motor, and in comes a proper 3.0-litre V6 biturbo TSI engine producing 500bhp and over 400lb ft of torque from just 4000rpm.
Eschewing the GTI’s front wheel drive this gets 4MOTION all-wheel drive to give the lightweight (1420kg) speedster a 0-100kph sprint time of just 3.6 seconds and a terminal velocity of 306kph.
Now the bad news, as real as it may look and sound at Woethersee, there are no plans for production, and even gamers have to wait till the middle of this month to download the Woerthersee GTI Roadster Concept .
But you know Volkswagen, you can keep all your XL1 green machines (reviewed here) – just squish the bug-like electric carts into recyclable plastic, and instead just give us some of these crazed creations.
Oi VW. Build it. Now!