At the 2014 Beijing auto show, Volkswagen showed the fantastic Golf R 400 Concept, a hypothetical ultra-hot-hatch powered by a 395-hp, 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine. Soon after the show, VW confirmed the R 400 wouldn’t be hypothetical at all, and that it would be put into production, which was great news. But things just got better: At the Vienna engine symposium, VW’s R&D chief Heinz-Jakob Neusser revealed that the super-Golf “could make more than 400 horsepower.” Color us enticed.
While Neusser could have been speaking hypothetically—there’s that word again—we think that because his statement was made in front of VW supervisory board chief Ferdinand Piech and VW CEO Martin Winterkorn, it’s probably a done deal. We’d translate his comments to: The R 400 will make more than 400 horsepower. To handle that output, the Golf R 400 will be fitted with 4Motion all-wheel drive and a dual-clutch automatic transmission. VW views the car as a natural extension of its sporty Golf lineup, which stretches from the GTI to the regular Golf R and on to this ultimate sports machine.
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No performance numbers have been communicated, so for now VW is sticking to the claim the R 400 will reach 62 mph in 3.9 seconds and charge on to a (governed) top speed of 174 mph. And now we know it’ll have more than 400 horsepower, so if Volkswagen’s quoted figures weren’t conservative already, they sure are now.
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