The Volkswagen Hot Hatch Powered By A Bentley W12

The Golf is one of Volkswagen’s best-known models, with a long history of providing both practical city motoring and hair-raising driving enjoyment in its GTI form. Most of us are familiar with the sportier members of the Golf family, namely the GTI and the R. However, there is one concept Golf that proved to be the craziest of them all.

In 2007, a Golf GTI was equipped with none other than VW’s legendary W12 engine, best known among automotive enthusiasts for getting Bentleys from A to B very quickly. Sadly, this wacky concept could never make it into production, but it remains a curious part of Golf history. Let’s dive into the story of this unique creation.

The Mighty W12 Engine

The main attraction, of course, is the heart of this one-off Golf, the W12 engine that we recently said goodbye to. Developed at the tail end of the millennium, the W12 was first seen in naturally aspirated guise, powering the 1997 Volkswagen concept car of the same name. A few years later, in 2001, the Audi A8 became the first production car to use the W12 engine. The W12 continued to be used in several VW Group models, most notably Bentleys, before being discontinued earlier this year.

The W12 name comes from its configuration, which resembles the shape of the letter W. The engine is made up of three cylinder banks borrowed from VR6 engines, offset by 60 degrees to each other. The result is an extremely powerful engine (with an output north of 600 hp in some configurations) that provides smooth, versatile performance. For this reason, Bentley is the VW Group marque most commonly associated with it; several of the brand’s most famous models have been powered by a W12 over the years, including the Continental, the Flying Spur, and the Bentayga. Ultra-high-end luxury, however, isn’t the only application VW found for the W12: some more accessible mainstream cars from the group, such as the VW Touareg and the Audi A8, have also sported a W12 under the hood.

The W12 is not the only member of Volkswagen’s W family. two other types of W engine have been built over the years. One, the little known W8, was briefly used in the 2001 W8 Passat, but its career as a production engine was short-lived due to poor performance. The other, the W16, is far more famous: the most powerful member of the group, it was famously used by Bugatti in the Veyron and Chiron. As is the case with the W12, the W16 is also now out of production, and has managed to go out on a high. The last Bugatti model to be powered by one, the W16 Mistral, was released last year, and recently set a speed record for fastest open-top car.

Franken-Golf: The GTI Festival And The GTI W12-650

The GTI W12-650, as it’s officially known, was created as part of a celebration. The annual GTI Treffen (German for “GTI Meeting”) is a celebration of, you’ve guessed, all things related to the world of the iconic GTI badge and Volkswagen as a whole. In past years, the festival took place on the shores of Lake Worthersee in Austria. However, last year, it looked like the event was in danger of disappearing forever, due to local authorities struggling to control reckless driving, growing crowds, and even riots. Volkswagen itself stepped in to save the GTI Treffen, and came up with a new location: Wolfsburg in Germany, home of the Volkswagen Arena and manufacturing location of the Golf GTI.

In 2007, long before any of this came to pass, the GTI Traffen was still happily chugging along in Worthersee, and Volkswagen decided to make its presence known with something attendees were unlikely to forget. The company’s engineering team decided to use its W12 engine, which had been created around a decade earlier, in a Golf GTI: this impressive engineering feat was not without complications, but it paid off, resulting in a GTI quite unlike any other ever built.

A Mid-Engined Golf?

First off, there were some basic logistical challenges to overcome to fit this square peg in a round hole. Well, the problem wasn’t so much about the shape of the hole as the size of it: the Golf’s engine bay, designed to accommodate nothing more than a diminutive turbocharged four-cylinder unit, did not have the space required for the hefty W12. Volkswagen’s engineers, however, were not deterred, and came up with a solution that resulted in the only mid-engined Golf to be ever built by the company. The rear seats were disposed of, creating a space big enough for the W12 to sit comfortably behind the driver. The body itself had to be widened by 6.3 inches to create the additional room required.

Digging In The Parts Bin

Once the engine was nestled in place, the next step was figuring out how to adapt the rest of the car to all that additional power, in order to create something actually drivable. The team set out to search the entirety of the Volkswagen Group to find parts that suited this build; the end result is a patchwork of parts coming from all sorts of unexpected places. The gearbox came from the Phaeton sedan, the front brakes were borrowed from the Audi RS 4, and the rear axle and brakes came from a Lamborghini Gallardo.

An Interior With Racing DNA

The body and mechanical components were not the only part of this strange Golf that underwent modifications. In keeping with its character, the interior was injected with a healthy dose of motorsport DNA: the door liners were removed in the pursuit of weight saving, a fire extinguisher was added in the glove compartment, and transparent switch guards were added to control basic functions. The upholstery was upgraded with black Alcantara. The only problem was that none of the buttons were functional. This car was a rush job, and VW only had enough time to make the car drive and look good.

Goodbye Manual, Goodbye ICE: The Golf’s Future

It’s fairly safe to say that a bonkers one-off project like the GTI W12-650 will never happen again. However, Volkswagen is keen to preserve the fun, carefree spirit of the Golf even in a rapidly changing automotive landscape. The facelifted version of the eighth-generation Golf GTI was unveiled at the start of this year and an even more powerful Clubsport version arrived a few months later, but sadly is not set to come to the US. The 2025 Golf R has also been announced, the most powerful to date. A Clubsport version of this is rumored to be in the works as well, as a fitting send-off to combustion.

The GTI 8.5 gives us a glimpse into the future of the Golf name for two reasons. The first one is that it officially signals the end of the manual transmission for every variety of Golf, even the GTI version. The second is that the 8.5 is due to be the final combustion-powered version of the iconic model, as the nameplate is on its way to electric transition.

While the manual transmission and combustion engine may be on borrowed time for the Golf, according to Volkswagen, everything that made the GTI so much fun is going to be preserved in future vehicles such as the ID.GTI, due to arrive in Europe in 2027 and in the US not long afterward. The ID.GTI is meant to be the Golf GTI’s spiritual successor of sorts, embodying the hot hatch character in a new way. There may never be another W12 Golf, but the spirit of innovation and enjoyable motoring that drove its creation continues to live in a different form.

Sources:
Volkswagen