Volkswagen Has Brought Back Its Iconic 641 HP W12-Powered Golf GTI To Remind Us How Delightfully Insane It Used To Be

It’s no secret that the Volkswagen of today is not the company it used to be. Today’s Volkswagen sells sensible crossovers with either a sensible four-cylinder engine or an adequate electric powertrain. But that wasn’t always the case. Two decades ago, Volkswagen was properly insane and cranked out delightful, stupid cars seemingly just because it could. In celebration of 50 years of the Golf GTI, Volkswagen has dusted off the prime example of what used to be. This is the Golf GTI W12-650, and it’s just peak 2000s Volkswagen.

Volkswagen is doing a big media push for its celebration of 50 years of the Golf GTI. Yep, the original Golf GTI hit the market back in 1976, and the hot hatch would become one of Volkswagen’s most beloved models. Now, as the GTI turns 50, Volkswagen says it’s launching its first-ever all-electric GTI with the ID. Polo GTI. The Golf GTI is also getting an extremely red ‘GTI Edition 50’ anniversary model.

Volkswagen’s pulling out all of the stops for this celebration, and has pulled out a bunch of GTI concept cars that were either just wild design exercises or Volkswagen flexing its engineering muscles. One of those cars is arguably the coolest vehicle Volkswagen has ever built in the modern era. What do you get when you marry a Golf with the heart of a Bentley? A mid-engine, wide-track wonder with 12 weird cylinders and 641 HP! The Golf GTI W12-650 is perhaps Volkswagen at its most, and while it may be two decades old, it’s still amazing today.

A Legend With Plaid Seats

Volkswagen says the original GTI was developed in secret under the code name “Sport Golf,” and that the story went a little bit like this:

The “Sport Golf” team includes engineer Alfons Löwenberg, chassis expert Herbert Horntrich, Head of Development Hermann Hablitzel, marketing specialist Horst-Dieter Schwittlinsky and Head of Press Anton Konrad. The five Volkswagen employees meet in a private flat and quickly agree: they want to create a fascinatingly powerful Golf that is affordable, fast and approved by the top motorsport authority, the FIA. As a first step, they build a prototype based on the equally new Scirocco, which shares many components with the Golf, featuring 74 kW (100 PS) and an infernally loud exhaust system. A roaring beast. The team soon designs a more realistic version and presents it to Volkswagen’s Head of Development, Professor Ernst Fiala. His verdict: “You’re crazy.”

Undeterred, the “Sport Golf” team continues – still undercover, still based on the Scirocco. Every detail is questioned and improved. The tests are elaborate and take time. In spring 1975, the team presents the updated Sport Golf in Scirocco guise to the Board at Volkswagen’s Ehra-Lessien test track. Now even Fiala is impressed. At the end of May, the official development order follows. The project gathers momentum. Six initial prototypes are built. One of them appears as a pace car at the Nürburgring in summer 1975, turning heads among spectators in the Eifel. How can a Golf be so fast?

In September 1975, the time had come: At the IAA, the very first Golf GTI made its debut – featuring 81 kW (110 PS), a red radiator grille and sports seats in tartan design. Visitors were thrilled. Market launch followed in 1976. Demand skyrocketed – instead of the planned 5,000 units, tens of thousands were sold in the first year. No surprise, as the car was highly dynamic, affordable and economical at the same time.

The GTI has been a bit of a worldwide phenomenon. Since its launch in 1976, Volkswagen says, more than 2.5 million GTIs have found homes around the world. The Golf itself has been a smashing success over eight generations, with more than 37 million sold globally. Back in 2021, Volkswagen of America said that nearly 2.5 million of the Golfs ever built were sold in America.

Part of that Volkswagen magic was that, up until recent times here in America, the Golf had so many great variations. For years, the Golf had seemingly as many flavors as one of those Pininfarina Coke machines. You could have your Golf in a two-door hatch, a four-door hatch, a convertible, all the way up to a diesel wagon if you so desired. If you wanted your German steed fast, you could have gotten your Golf in GTI, R32, or R specifications. Volkswagen even sold the Golf as a pickup truck! Journalists wax poetic about how practical the Golf is and how a GTI is practical speed. The GTI, through so many of its generations, has proven these claims accurate.

Even as I have somewhat moved away from my once devout fanaticism about Volkswagen, the GTI still holds a place in my heart. I still have a GTI or a Golf R32 with a VR6 on my bucket list.

Twelve Cylinders Of Silly

No matter where Volkswagen takes the Golf and the GTI, there’s a single car in the world that qualifies as the craziest Golf ever built. No, I’ll go even further. This car is peak modern Volkswagen, right up there with the Phaeton W12, the Passat W8, and the Touareg V10 TDI.

The creation of the Golf GTI W12-650 was something that only the Ferdinand Piëch-era of Volkswagen could pull off. Every year, Volkswagen enthusiasts descend on Reifnitz at Lake Wörthersee in Austria. The factory-backed festival is one of the largest Volkswagen gatherings and has been known to collect more than 100,000 people each year. Along with connecting with their fellow VW fans, the Lake Wörthersee event was also the place to see the freshest concept to come from the minds within Volkswagen.

Two months before the event in 2007, Volkswagen engineers wanted to do something crazy, but also sort of wholesome. For that year’s concept car, Volkswagen’s engineers wanted to make one car that combined elements from across the Volkswagen Group portfolio.

The base of the vehicle would be a Golf GTI, which was in its fifth generation at that time. By the time the engineers were done, only the doors, hood, and lights were left untouched. The first change came from the Bentley side of the Volkswagen Group umbrella, which donated the 6.0-liter twin-turbo narrow-angle W12 engine from the Bentley Continental GT. This mill was good for 641 horses, or more power than any GTI before or since. It also made 553 pounds of twist.

This engine couldn’t fit into the Golf’s engine bay, which fit a VR6 at the largest, so the engineers placed the W12 in the middle, right behind the front seats. Of course, there was no chance that stock GTI components were going to work with the new heart, so the engineers robbed the Lamborghini parts bin for the rear axle and brakes from the Gallardo. They then went to Audi to scrounge up the front brakes from the RS 4. Then, surprisingly, the engineers stole the transmission from the Volkswagen Phaeton.

With the drivetrain set, now, the engineers made this one-off Golf look like it came from 2050. They dropped the suspension by three inches, widened the body by 6.3 inches, and stiffened the chassis. The team even had to reshape the rear windows to get their desired result.

The roof was carbon fiber with a built-in scoop, the vehicle’s flanks were carved out to have huge intakes, and it was given comically huge bumpers. Inside, surfaces were covered in Alcantara, the door cards were stripped out, and a dash of white was added for a little pop.

For a finishing touch, the car’s 19-inch wheels were shod in fat 12-inch-wide rear tires and 9-inch-wide front tires. Of course, the car’s exterior was finished in that sort of Apple Store white that Volkswagen loved at the time.

The craziest part was that the Golf GTI W12-650 was not a static display. The engineers went through the work to build a functional vehicle. Volkswagen then tested the madness, concluding that it could hit 62 mph in 3.7 seconds and then race on to a theoretical top speed of 201.8 mph. Apparently, nobody at Volkswagen dared to test the top speed. Oh, right, all of this power was put down entirely through the rear wheels. There was no AWD trickery here to rein in the chaos.

Volkswagen says that the Golf GTI W12-650 is as powerful as a Lamborghini, and today, about two decades later, it’s still faster than the fastest Golf variant. A Golf R has a 2.0-liter turbo four good for 328 horsepower and 310 lb-ft, which is enough juice to get it to 60 in 4.1 seconds. The GIT W12-650 is still more than a half-second faster and 11 times crazier.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the GTI, Volkswagen has pulled the Golf GTI W12-650 out of stasis and has draped it in hot red.

From A Different Volkswagen

You have to hear how it sounds. Click here if you cannot see the embed above.

This feels bittersweet in a way. Volkswagen still has a lot of fun today with the GTI, Golf R, and the ID. Buzz, no debate there. But Volkswagen also feels like a shell of its former self. The VR6 engine is dead, the W16 engine is gone, the GTI doesn’t have a manual transmission anymore, and Volkswagen is significantly less silly.

In a way, it feels like the Ferdinand Piëch-era of Volkswagen was like a college student with spunk. It did wacky engineering projects just because it could, and its cars were sometimes insane, sometimes seemingly just for the fun of the game. Now, it’s like Volkswagen has grown up, gotten a corporate job, and wears a suit every day.

The Golf GTI W12-650 is a part of that 50 years of GTI celebration, but it’s also a reminder. It came from a time when Volkswagen made a hyper luxury sedan that could keep its cabin cool at 186 mph, and when Bugatti was laying down speed records with cars that had more radiators than Teslas have buttons. The Audi A2, the V10 TDI engine, and the dominating diesel racecars all came from the era that spawned the craziest Golf.

So, as the GTI turns 50, it’s cool to see that Volkswagen still has a little fun. I hope that, as time goes on, Volkswagen never loses that. Because every once in a while, you just need to do something silly just because you can, and it’s fun.

Top graphic images: Volkswagen