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Volkswagen Golf R 400 – official images of mega-hatch

The Volkswagen Golf R 400 would be the fastest product Golf ever if it were to be built.


The German car company has followed up sketches of its latest quick-Golf concept with an official unveiling at the 2014 Beijing motor show.

It's based on the newly released Volkswagen Golf R but ramps up performance with a 0-100km/h sprint time of 3.9 seconds and a 280km/h top speed that beats the production car by a full second and 30km/h respectively.

While the R 400 is only 15kg lighter than the regular R, the 400 represents 400PS - 295kW. That's an 89kW of power, produced 700rpm higher at 7200rpm, and torque also increases, from 380Nm to 450Nm, developed between 2400 and 6000rpm.

All that is distributed to the road via a six-speed dual-clutch auto and Haldex all-wheel-drive system.

The Volkswagen Golf R 400 sits on the same sports suspension and tyres as the R but features different style 19-inch alloys.

There's more than just those five-blade wheels to easily pick the 400 from the regular R. The body, painted in 'silver flake' and featuring a black roof, is 40mm wider to accommodate the wheels that are positioned further outboard beneath flared wheel arches.

Up front there's a distinctive lower front bumper with air dam flanked by sizeable side air intakes, and the grille is adorned with a lemon yellow horizontal strip instead of the chrome equivalent on the R and red strip on the Golf GTI.

The rear is also notable for the twin tail-pipes that ignore the quad exhausts of the Golf R to make a nostalgic nod to the old six-cylinder Golf R32.

Inside, the lemon yellow is used again for interior trim, stitching and instrument dials to break up the predominantly black interior. Trim materials include Alcantara and carbon fibre.

Driver and front passenger sit in motorsport-style bucket seats complete with race-harness slots.

The Volkswagen Golf R 400 isn't as powerful as the 372kW twin-turbo V6 Vision Golf GTI Concept shown in 2013, though it matches that more fanciful show car's 3.9sec acceleration ability.

Volkswagen says the R 400 reflects the performance potential of the latest Golf - the seventh generation of the famous German hatch that celebrates its 40th birthday in 2014.

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