Volkswagen, as they do every year, prepared something a little special for the annual fan gathering at Worthersee, Austria, where GTI fans from all over the world congregate. For 2018, the company also announced a new limited run of their hot hatch, called the TCR, which stands for “Touring Car Racing”.
The good news is that the car has now been confirmed to reach Australian shores within the first half of 2019 exclusively in its 5-door guise.
Sure, it was labelled as a ‘concept’ when it was unveiled in May, but no one was fooled that the car had anything other than a 100 percent chance of reaching production. As far as Worthersee debutants, there’s nothing all too special about the GTI TCR, but that only inches it closer to showrooms sooner.
To differentiate it, the car sports bespoke exterior finish with unique contrasting decal and 18-inch gloss black wheels. Meanwhile, Volkswagen have also turned the performance and handling dial up by a couple of crucial notches, endowing it with uprated brakes, sharper suspension, Akrapovic exhausts with titanium exits, and a limited slip differential.
Being a GTI, it remains front driven, but its EA888 2.0-litre TSI has been breathed upon a little to extract a little more power. At 213kW and 380Nm, it doesn’t offer dramatically more grunt than, say, a 40 Years edition, but it is enough to grant it the title of most powerful Golf GTI yet to be series produced.
It’s also only available with a 7-speed dual-clutch transmission, unfortunately. No official acceleration times have been released just yet, but it’s top speed is confirmed to be 264km/h provided you pay extra to have the electronic limiter removed.
Also unreleased is how many in total Volkswagen plans to produce, which will effect how they will be priced as well as how much we can realistically expect the Australian allocation will be. However, given how the all-wheel drive Golf R with some options is pushing closer $60k, we’d have that waiting in the wings if the TCR catches your fancy.
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