Golf R 400 Exhaust Sound Is Heard for the First Time

At April's Beijing Auto Show, the automaker wowed everybody with a concept called the Golf R 400. For fans of the brand and of fast family compacts, this is the closest thing to a god right now. Up next, we'll show you the very first video of that car in motion as it was being loaded up on a trailer, where else but in Austria, where the largest gathering of VW fans just took place. Supposedly capable of 0 to 100 km/h in 3.9 seconds, the supercar of hatchbacks is being gingerly driven here, which is a bit of a shame.

Still, even at low revs, it makes a nice sound and causes quite the spectacle in Vienna. As the name suggests, this hot hatch grand master has 400 horsepower oozing out from its 2.0 TSI turbo engine.

The Golf R currently in production boast the same 300 hp as an Audi S3, which means there's another 100 hp to go. At the current rate of power ascendence (about 30 hp per generation) it would take the R about 15 more years for the flagship car to reach its target, but the difference could be gobbled up in one swoop with a track-special version akin to Mitsubishi's Evo FQ-400.

But do you want that, a Evo made by Volkswagen? Because this really isn't the German way of doing things. A far more likely outcome is that the R 400 will enter production soon, with somewhere around 330-340 hp. Audi is also mulling a model to slot between the S3 and the next-gen RS3, so the two could be co-developed.

Hope that doesn't sound too disappointing for the 16-year old Golf R fan!