Crazy Golf R420 Chases Porsche 911 GT3 on the Nurburgring

VW engineers geeked out over it, but about a year after they started testing, all funding was stopped because of Dieselgate. Company bosses quickly went public, saying all unprofitable cars would be pulled out of production and performance models would be limited in number. The R400 was scrapped in 2016.

Fast forward to 2018, and the opposite is happening. Volkswagen has invested even more money into the unprofitable Up! city car, is planning to have R versions of the Tiguan, Arteon, and Touareg and has put money back into the uber-Golf project.

However, there was something with the super-tuned 2-liter that they didn't like. So instead, of a Golf R400, we're getting an R420 with the 2.5-liter out of an Audi RS3. While there's no way of confirming that this prototype indeed has 420 horsepower (metric), we can easily identify the engine by its unmistakable sound.

It's a monster, and with the BMW M140i being dropped soon, this 2.5-liter will be the biggest engine you can buy in a compact car soon. Other cars are going to use it too, not just the RS3. For example, we've seen both the Tiguan R and a performance version of the new Audi Q3 testing it out on the same track.

The only problem with the uber-Golf is that it's arriving towards the end of the current hatchback's life cycle. Our hunch is that the Golf 8 will be presented at the 2019 Frankfurt Motor Show, less than a year from now. But production won't start immediatly.

So why are they still putting so much effort into the development of the R420? This could just be a pet project, but it could also become a limited-production car for super-purists, a bit like the Audi A1 clubsport. It's hard not to love the idea when even the Porsche 911 GT3 has trouble pulling away from the hatchback.