At the annual GTI festival at Wörthersee, Austria, Volkswagen has released the GTI Roadster, and here’s a picture of this spectacular GTI ever in flesh.
“The Vision GT project offered a wonderful opportunity to sketch out extreme ideas and design elements of the GTI that are portrayed as vibrantly, dynamically and emotionally as possible. Further development of an unmistakable design and a love for detail reflect the high standards shared by the Volkswagen GTI and the ‘Gran Turismo’ by Sony PlayStation product brands,” remarks Klaus Bischoff, Head of Design at Volkswagen.
The two-seat convertible is powered by a 3.0-litre V6 twin-turbocharged TSI engine that produces 503hp and a mighty 559Nm of torque between 4,000 and 6,000 rpm; from just 2,000 revs, 500Nm of that torque is available. The power of the TSI engine is transferred to the 20-inch wheel-and-tyre combination via a 7-speed DSG dual-clutch automatic transmission and a 4MOTION all-wheel-drive system. The lightweight, 1,421kg sportscar sprints from 0 to 100km/h in an estimated 3.5 seconds and goes onto a top track speed of 308km/h.
The GTI Roadster, Vision Gran Turismo sports a radiant, intensive red metallic colour and all bolt-on parts are designed in matt carbon as an accent that complements the high-gloss red of the body. Only the radiator grille and the screen over the engine compartment vent are finished in high-gloss black.
The doors swivel up and forward, visually splitting a prominent character line into an upper and lower half. The contours of the doors are also very distinctive, because they are framed by the side skirts (trimmed with the “Gran Turismo” badge at the rear), the C-pillar and the heavily flared wheelarches. A small but exclusive detail on the sides is the illuminated GTI badge that is integrated in the “tornado” line. On the upper door section, the side window forms a line that rises forward with the low-profile windscreen, like a speedboat’s.
The 20-inch Golf GTI centerlock aluminum-alloy wheels have body-colour elements and are 8.5J wide at the front and 9.5J at the back, with 235/35 ZR20 front and 275/30 ZR20 tyres . The brakes are suitably large to cope with the car’s performance: 15.0 inches in diameter at the front and 14.0 inches at the rear.
Inside, the driver and passenger sit in a dual carbonfiber monocoque. The two sides are partitioned by an open bar that ascends from rear to front, with a fire extinguisher beneath it. The GTI Roadster is equipped with two race-style buckets, placed low and the seats and the four-spoke grip steering wheel are covered with Alcantara. Another motorsport-style feature is the cockpit display mounted directly to the steering column, far ahead of the driver. The steering wheel is mounted on a very long, exposed steering column, which is typical of a race car, too. Designers located the red, illuminated rotary light switch and shift paddles to the left and right of the steering wheel’s central axis, so the driver never has to move his or her hand off the wheel.
The interior and exterior materials and colours were intentionally differentiated: the typical GTI red is used for some interior accents, such as the five-point safety belts, contrasting stitching on the seats, the door handles and the steering-wheel controls on the steering wheel, but the rest of the colour selections were reduced to “Black” and “Anthracite”. Inside the GTI Roadster, most decorative elements were omitted in favour of an uncompromising motorsport look so that the driver can focus exclusively on both the real and virtual race track.
