Most powerful series-production GTI in five decades brings special axle hardware and a clearer track focus
“It’s definitely a better track car,” says the man opposite me. “Around the Nordschleife, it’s much faster. On the climb up to the Little Carousel, for instance, the Stefan Bellof ess is totally flat in this one. Through the twistier sections, it’s as fast as the Porsche GT cars on an industry pool day.”That’s no lukewarm introduction for any performance car – and it’s Volkswagen head of chassis development Sebastian Willmann delivering it. The car he’s talking about – the most powerful series-production GTI there has yet been, no less – is Wolfburg’s 50th-anniversary present to its beloved hot hatchback icon: the Volkswagen Golf GTI Edition 50.Well, it’s a present of a sort (VW certainly isn’t giving them away). It’s not a limited-numbers special edition: they’ll make as many as there is demand for – but only until the end of 2026.But back to where we began. The question I asked Willmann was a carefully targeted one. Is this car better than what’s widely regarded as the high-water mark for modern hot Golfs: the Mk7 GTI Clubsport S? He doesn’t hesitate to answer, in a way that suggests he knows what he’s saying as a matter of incontrovertible fact. Time to find out what he’s so confident about.
